The most comprehensive inventory of climate finance to-date, The Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2014, finds that global climate finance flows have fallen to USD 331 billion – far below even the most conservative estimates of investment needs. It also provides a detailed overview of the methodological challenges involved in tracking global climate finance flows. In addition to that, this report supports serious debate on these key questions by drawing together climate finance data from numerous sources to present policy makers with the most comprehensive information available about the scale, key actors, instruments, recipients, and uses of finance supporting climate change mitigation and adaptation outcomes.
CPI describes how a combination of public policies and financial instruments, and robust private risk management measures mobilized EUR 360 million of private investment in Scandinavian Europe’s largest windfarm, delivering power to 100,000 homes and how the project was able to attract investment from an institutional investor, Danish pension fund, PensionDanmark, whose position was guaranteed by the Danish state-backed export credit agency, EKF.
Institutional investors, which together manage assets of over $70 trillion, often have investment objectives that are aligned with the investment profile of low-carbon infrastructure. At first glance, access to this large pool of capital and the alignment of objectives should help lower the costs of financing renewable energy. In this study, CPI finds that while these investors could supply a significant share of the total required investment, various factors limit the extent to which they can invest in a way that could lower the cost of financing renewable energy. Furthermore, financial regulation of institutional investors, regulation of energy markets, and renewable energy policy, often create additional obstacles to renewable energy investment.
Risk — whether real or perceived — is the single most important factor preventing renewable energy projects from finding financial investors, or raising the returns that these investors demand. It is also one thing that policymakers can cause, control, alleviate, or help mitigate. In a series of three studies, titled Risk Gaps, CPI maps the availability of risk instruments against demand and analyzes several new, potential instruments designed to address the biggest gaps: first-loss protection instruments and policy risk insurance.
Green economy (GE) was recognized at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in 2012 as an essential tool in achieving sustainable development. Effective GE policymaking requires indicators that capture the nexus of economic, social and environment issues in order to provide the evidence-based information necessary for effective decision-making. UNEP has developed a Green Economy Indicators Framework that weaves various indicators into the Integrated Policymaking process and is intended to assist policymaking at the country level. This report synthesises three studies on the role of indicators in assisting national green economy policymaking that were conducted in Ghana, Mauritius and Uruguay. Based on these country experiences, the report discusses key findings and challenges.
Effective water management is a crucial ingredient for green growth. It is becoming increasingly clear that astute investment in, and management of, water can help to drive green growth. To do this, governments must catalyse water-related investment and innovation that underspin sustained green growth and give rise to new economic opportunities. Drawing on recent OECD work on policies to support green growth, and on water economics and governance, this Policy Perspectives brochure lays out the opportunities to manage and invest in water as a means for green growth. This paper identifies the key policy options that governments can use to assist this transition towards greener growth.
Indonesia’s desire to drive economic growth and reduce climate risk is reflected in the sweeping policy reforms it has introduced in recent years to meet targets announced in 2009 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In this report, CPI identifies which public actors are investing in Indonesia, through which instruments, and what they are investing in to provide a baseline against which to measure progress and plan scale up. The landscape reveals investment patterns that allow decision makers to pinpoint where the biggest barriers and opportunities are.
California is both one of the largest economies and one of the largest emitters globally, making its climate change policies some of the most important in the world. They are also some of the most ambitious. In particular, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB32) set a series of policies and programs across all major business sectors to return California emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. A key component of this set of policies is the Cap and Trade Program, which caps greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from key business sectors in California. With the Cap and Trade Program in its second year of full operation, CPI studies how firms make business decisions in the presence of a carbon price — whether abatement options that have been identified as technically feasible prove to be attractive in practice, or whether barriers prevent firms from pursuing otherwise cost-effective abatement options.
Concentrated solar power (CSP) is a promising technology for low-carbon power generation. Thanks to abundant solar resources in the world’s sun belt and its ability to provide flexible and reliable power supply when combined with thermal storage, CSP could play an important role in maintaining a steady power supply in future low-carbon energy systems with high penetrations of fluctuating renewable power from solar photovoltaic and wind. With findings drawn from four case studies and background paper, this policy brief offers recommendations for international finance institutions (IFIs) and developing country policymakers on how to deploy concentrated solar power (CSP) while achieving cost reductions.
Electricity systems across the U.S. and Europe face significant challenges in the transition to low-carbon energy. While the transition provides plenty of opportunities for investors, businesses, and consumers alike, the current business and regulatory models of investor owned utilities (IOUs) and independent power producers (IPPs), which have mainly developed around competitive markets for fossil fuel generation, are particularly ill-suited to take advantage of these new opportunities. This paper outlines the some major challenges each business segment will face and sets out a roadmap for addressing the challenges.