Why concessional capital fits the framework.
Most clean-energy infrastructure in Pacific and emerging markets fails to clear commercial-only IRR (a standard investment-return metric) hurdles. The framework explicitly models the resilience, sovereignty, and capability-transfer dimensions that justify concessional terms (financing priced below normal market rates) — and quantifies them in the same model that produces the commercial pro forma. The result is a fundable case that meets both the impact thesis and the financial-discipline test.
Pacific island projects illustrate the pattern. Diesel displacement creates the anchor commercial case (the reliable, foundational rationale the rest of the project's economics builds on). Oversizing the renewable system above contracted load generates surplus that funds desalination, ice-making, cold-chain food export, and resilience capacity — each of which has its own value-per-kWh (value earned per kilowatt-hour, a standard unit of electricity) that the ranking model captures. The integrated chain is more valuable than the components.