Clean energy for the Pacific Island countries: Does donor funding promote this transition?

Donor funding, both grants and concessional loans, on renewable energy projects to Pacific Island countries (PICs) have increased overtime. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of this donor funding on PICs transition to renewable energy. Our hypothesis is that donor funded renewable projects have facilitated transition to clean energy for PICs. Using data for nine PICs, we discover no support for our hypothesis. Alternative measures of donor funding persistently reject our hypothesis. Additional regression analysis suggests that donor funding is insignificantly related to the renewable energy transition. We draw policy implications from these findings.