Climate Finance Options for Cities

The city of Paris has been at the centre of international attention, giving stage to the adoption of the Paris Agreement. While this will boost global action against climate change, the City of Paris itself demonstrated leadership in tackling climate change. Issuing green climate bonds worth 300m EUR, the city underlined its efforts to curb emissions. With the cash, Paris aims at financing a number of projects relating to renewable energy, energy efficiency, low-carbon transport as well as urban climate change adaptation.

Many cities around the world are struggling with acquiring finance for friendly urban developments. Generally there are three different channels: international, national and local sources of money. While this appears to be a sound basis of financing, each one entails multiple access challenges for cities. On the international side, most financiers require the funds to pass through national budgets or ministries often leaving only small percentages for municipal actions. National sources of money often come with political strings attached, asking city decision-makers for political like-mindedness as a prerequisite. Accessing existing local sources on the other hand is often politically unpopular as it competes with other local budget lines. [...]

The entire blog post can be read at the CDKN-website