One week of insight, expertise and community-building
Climate finance academy supports partners to become green lending innovators in emerging markets
Climate finance is increasingly moving from niche to mainstream. Flows of private and public money into climate finance have almost doubled between 2011 and 2020. Moreover, it is expected that investments into climate finance will need to increase 7-fold by 2030 to meet global climate goals. However, mobilizing capital is only one side of the story.
For climate innovations to reach scale on the ground, capacity building is needed for local financial institutions and project developers across the globe as well as support in market development to transition carbon intensive sectors to clean energy alternatives.
One way to provide support in capacity building and market development is through Technical Assistance* which aims to institutionalize climate finance know-how by funding bespoke advisory service to enable partner institutions to reach transformational change and by organising peer learning events.
A few days ago, responsAbility on behalf its flagship Climate Finance vehicle, held its third Academy in Zurich. 38 financial institutions from 24 countries actively engaged in interactive discussions during a weeklong peer learning workshop.
The participants spoke highly of the collaborative sessions, where they discussed the benefits of building and scaling green portfolios – and the importance of getting the reporting and communication around green lending right. A few shared their impressions as well as hopes for accelerating green lending and sustainable finance at home.
Direct access to knowledge and network
I was amazed this week by the case studies and learning about the solutions people came up with in different markets, such as Cambodia, Kenya, Bangladesh and Costa Rica. You can use this experience, localize and then implement it in your own country. Upon my return to Armenia I will reach out to people I met for more information and support. I look forward to receiving their support and recommendations on how we can implement these solutions to have better impact in our country. I highly value the readiness to support, which can come not only in financial terms. They have experience implementing projects all over the world and can help us tailor the solutions that best fit our financial institution’s needs.
Vahagn Ghuloyan, Armeria Bank, Armenia
Real partnership for impact
The week was incredible. At home you may think you are doing things well, but then you hear the experts and colleagues from other countries and you realize there is still a lot of room to improve and so many ways to help. What I think is really different from other fund mangers is that they are very close to you – they are a really good partner. You feel that they really want to do the projects, and it’s not just because they have the mandate. What’s also important is that you get a real measurement of what you are doing and the impact you are having in your project.
Eduardo Alpizer, Mega, Mexico
Technical assistance and experience
We started thinking about sustainable financing some years back as we have been very active in renewable energy and thinking about how to go green in other sectors. We had already started engaging with responsAbility as one of the key partners, so my expectation was to come here and see their experience with my own eyes. I was really impressed to hear about what is happening across the world. I could also see how the technical assistance is really helpful. One of the key takeaways this week was the need to see green financing as an institutional approach, not a stand-alone product. Another is that green financing is not so complicated, and we need to make things simple.
Jean Claude Iliboneye, BRD Rwanda
References: Climate Policy Initiative: Global Landscape of Climate Finance: A Decade of Data - CPI (climatepolicyinitiative.org) *Technical assistance is made possible through the financial support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, the UK’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Climate Finance vehicle.