Infra Dig – Ravi Suri on PF, nuclear and climate change

Infra Dig welcomes back a regular guest for this latest episode that focuses on the role that project finance will play in the finance of nuclear power, how successful the COP30 summit was and – Ravi’s favourite topic – how PF can save the planet.

IJGlobal editorial director Angus Leslie Melville pulls up a seat for a far-ranging conversation with Ravi Suri, global head of sustainable finance and impact investing at KPMG, but now associated with the Africa  practice of the organisation.

This podcast runs for almost 31 minutes and sees Ravi take the listener through the challenging process of taking nuclear to financial close as project finance transactions, the efficacity of the latest COP summit, and saving the world one PF deal at a time.

This latest episode can be accessed on Spotify (embedded above) as well as through the Amazon service. It is also hosted across a slew of other platforms, open access on all of them.

Ravi is only too happy to agree that – on climate change issues – the COP summits, while “they do their bit”, are not sufficient “to get us there” and the market needs to step up.

“We have been deploying about $1.3 trillion in the year 2022, but we need about 5x more in the next 10 years – and the bulk of that is in the energy sector,” says Ravi.

“So, if we have to get the climate change fight under our belt and win it, we’ve got to work with science technology and bankers who can finance technologies.

“The answer lies in new technologies and in risk mitigating those technologies so that we can get scalable finance.”

When it comes to the fight against climate change, Ravi is of the view that “we are making progress” but that it’s incremental.

Ravi says: “We have done a good job with solar. We have scaled solar down to make it competitive. We have done a good job with wind. We are doing a good job with battery storage.

“But then, at the same time, we are at the age of AI and data centres – which need a lot of power.

“So – while we have done good work with solar – it’s not enough and we need radical change… and that’s where nuclear comes in.”

Tune in to the latest Infra Dig episode to hear more…