The world has an opportunity. To create a more sustainable, resilient future, it’s critical that our economies achieve net-zero emissions.

But no one can do it alone. Society can only realize this opportunity by working together to create new ideas and find fresh routes to sustainable growth that decrease carbon emissions and do not use up more land. These solutions must also support these solutions on the path to commercial viability by overcoming barriers such as insufficient policy and regulatory frameworks, gaps between demand and supply, or a lack of mature measurement tools and business cases.

Rising to all of these challenges requires impactful solutions.

The Climate Solutions Partnership is a five-year philanthropic collaboration that combines HSBC’s financial expertise with the knowledge and experience of WRI, WWF and a network of local partners in scaling climate solutions. The partnership will help accelerate the transition to net zero by creating more opportunities for climate solutions to become commercially viable, as well as protecting and restoring biodiversity. We will achieve this by working together with businesses, financial organizations, government bodies and research institutions to remove the barriers to commercial financing for innovative climate solutions.

The Climate Solutions Partnership is backed by $100 million of philanthropic funding from HSBC between 2020 and 2025. The partnership is broadly divided into three workstreams, each one critical to increasing the rate of progress toward a pathway to a net-zero future.

1) Energy Transition in Asia

A successful transition from fossil fuels to clean renewables in Asia — who leads the global rise in energy demand — is critical to tackle the climate crisis. We aim to accelerate progress toward renewables and energy efficiency solutions in China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh. Together, these countries account for more than 35% of the world’s power consumption.

The projects in these countries will scale efficiency solutions in key sectors such as healthcare, textiles and apparel. Our work will facilitate the sharing of best practices to help markets learn from each other and enable recommendations of national and regional policies to scale commercialization of renewables.

2) Nature-based Solutions

Nature-based solutions (NBS) will protect biodiversity and reduce emissions in the atmosphere to contribute to net zero goals. The partnership is supporting more than 20 projects globally to promote sustainable agriculture, as well as protect and revitalize wetlands, mangroves and forests. Through the NBS Accelerator, the partners will scale solutions by providing technical and financial expertise.

We aim to address the current lack of systemic support by providing blueprints for replication and developing business and investment models for enterprises with high growth potential. We will also advocate for policy incentives to drive critical reforms in global and local markets.

3) Business Innovation

Start-ups are important innovators who pioneer new frontiers in climate solutions — but they often struggle to access the networks, financial backing and business mentoring required for success. We will support impactful business innovations that meet the net-zero goal by leveraging WWF’s Impactio platform.

 

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