Blog Posts: Climate Investment Funds

Something very important is happening in global finance: the $70 trillion in institutional investment pools is turning a little greener.

Over the past 25 years, dozens of national, regional and international climate funds have emerged, creating a confusing system. New WRI research offers recommendations to more effectively attract and disburse climate finance.

The United States spent $2.6 billion in 2015 to support climate action in developing nations. This finance represents just 0.07 percent of the federal budget, but boosts U.S. business, promotes development and improves national security.

Making the transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy is going to take a lot of investment, and the limited budgets of the public sector can’t tackle it alone.

But by targeting their support, governments can create incentives for significant private investment into climate activities; in other words, they can “mobilize” private investment.

Call it bad timing: Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions intensity is rising while that of most of the G20 countries decreases, just as more infrastructure investment will be needed to support expected economic growth and social inclusion. Representatives of commercial banks in Brazil, the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Brazil’s Ministry of Finance and others joined WRI experts to explore how they can collectively help the country make the transition to a low-carbon economy.

A...

The CIFs—a pair of multilateral climate finance funds designed to help developing countries pilot low-carbon, climate-resilient development—have been called a “living laboratory” for climate finance. Because they are one of the largest international climate finance funds and have been in operation for six years, other emerging funds can learn from their experiences. In particular, the Green Climate Fund (GCF)—which is expected to become the main vehicle for securing and distributing global climate finance—can benefit from the lessons coming out of the CIFs experience. We provide a few takeaways that provide lessons for the GCF.

There’s a growing gap between current investment in low-carbon energy and what’s needed to meet world demand while avoiding the worst impacts of climate change. The good news is there’s sufficient capital and investor interest to close much of this gap.

However, policies that encourage market certainty and level the playing field between different energy sources are needed to attract the volume of investment required, according to a special International Energy Agency (IEA) report, the World Energy Investment Outlook, released this month.

A new WRI working paper, “Monitoring Climate Finance in Developing Countries: Challenges and Next Steps,” draws on a series of three regional workshops in Latin America, Africa, and Asia where representatives from governments and other agencies discussed the challenges in monitoring climate finance flows, and some of the efforts their countries are making to overcome these challenges.

WRI’s six-part blog series, Mobilizing Clean Energy Finance, highlights individual developing countries’ experiences in scaling up investments in clean energy and explores the role climate finance plays in addressing investment barriers. The cases draw on WRI’s recent report, Mobilizing Climate Investment.

Mexico’s experiences with wind energy provide an important case study for policy makers pursuing renewable energy deployment in other countries.

WRI’s six-part blog series, Mobilizing Clean Energy Finance, highlights individual developing countries’ experiences in scaling up investments in clean energy and explores the role climate finance plays in addressing investment barriers. The cases draw on WRI’s recent report, Mobilizing Climate Investment.

South Africa’s experiences with wind energy provide an important case study for policy makers pursuing renewable energy deployment in other countries.