Publications - The Research Collaborative contributes to the development of more comprehensive methodologies for identifying private finance for climate action in developing counties.

Measuring publicly-mobilised private finance for climate action in developing countries

February 2020: Latest OECD statistics on "Amounts Mobilised from the Private Sector for Development" This brochure highlights main statistical trends over 2017-18. It captures amounts mobilised from the private sector by development finance interventions in form of guarantees, syndicated loans, shares in collective investment vehicles, credit lines, direct investment in companies and project finance special purpose vehicles, as well as simple co-financing arrangements.
November 2017: Research Collaborative Policy Perspectives "Private finance for climate action: Estimating the effects of public interventions" This brochure summarises work conducted since 2013 on estimating publicly-mobilised private finance. The brochure first introduces a typology of the potential effects that public interventions and enabling conditions have on private finance. It then provides an overview of the state of play on methodologies.
October 2017: Research Collaborative working documents on "Tracking export credits" and the "Investor Perspective for estimating mobilisation" The first document explores options to account for export credits in the context of climate finance. The second presents an approach to measure private finance mobilised by financial support resulting from policies. Both were prepared for the 11 September 2017 workshop of the Research Collaborative.
September 2017: WRI Working Paper "Designing and Testing a Methodology to Estimate Private Climate Finance Mobilization from Policy and Other Causal Factors" This paper proposes a qualitative method to estimate private climate finance mobilisation by policies and other factors. The approach uses surveys with governments and the private sector to assign weightings to pre-defined causal factors which are applied to estimate and attribute mobilised private finance.
August 2017: OECD and Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS) Working Paper "Estimating publicly-mobilised private finance for climate action: A South African case study" This paper estimates and analyses publicly-mobilised private finance for climate action in South Africa in 2010-2015. The effect of public finance is first estimated by analysing co-finance data. A pilot-method then further incorporates the role of financial support provided by policies for renewable energy and energy efficiency.
August 2017: OECD Working Paper "Amounts Mobilised from the Private Sector by Official Development Finance Interventions" This working paper presents results from the 2016 OECD DAC survey of amounts mobilised from the private sector in 2012-2015 by official development finance, including for climate-related activities. It covers guarantees, syndicated loans, shares in funds, direct investment in companies, and credit lines.
February 2016: OECD Working Paper "Amounts Mobilised from the Private Sector by Official Development Finance Interventions" This working paper presents results from the 2015 OECD DAC survey of amounts mobilised from the private sector in 2012-2014 by official development finance, including for climate-related activities. The survey tested methods and activity-level data collection for three mechanisms: guarantees, syndicated loans, and shares in funds.
January 2016: Artelia report "Estimating Private Climate Finance mobilised by France’s Climate Finance Interventions" This pilot study estimates and analyses the mobilisation of private finance as a result of bilateral French public climate finance interventions over the period 2013-2014. The study applies the Research Collaborative framework and tests available methodological options in practices.
December 2015: Joint-MDB note "Tracking Climate Co-Finance: Approach Proposed by MDBs" This briefing document seeks to expand the MDB public climate finance tracking to also estimate financial resources invested alongside MDBs by external parties. The document defines a common approach for MDBs on how to report on climate co-financing, clarifies key concepts and provides preliminary results.
December 2015: OECD Working Paper "Sector-level approach to estimating mobilised private climate finance: renewable energy" This paper tests the use of secondary data to estimate private finance mobilised for climate action in developing countries. Two approaches are explored: the first one based on an investment-related commercial database; the second one based on publicly-available private finance leverage ratios.
November 2015: CPI-OECD Working Paper "Estimating mobilized private finance for adaptation: exploring data and methods" This study reviewes the current state of play and then develops and evaluates a range of methodological options to estimate private finance mobilised by public adaptation finance. It further includes two case studies, which test these methodological options in practice for two adaptation projects.
August 2015: KfW Development Bank paper "Proposal of a methodology for tracking publicly mobilized private climate finance" Building on Research Collaborative work to date, this paper describes a proposal for a group of bilateral development finance institutions to track private finance that they mobilise. It details methodological options and choices, as well as presents results on that basis for the period 2008-2014.
March 2015: OECD-WRI Working Paper "Estimating mobilised private climate finance: methodological approaches, options and trade-offs" The report presents a framework that steps through key decision points involved in estimating publicly mobilised private climate finance and assesses a range of methodological options to address these. It then suggests options that could be considered in the short- and longer-term respectively.
February 2015: OECD Working Paper "Public Interventions and Private Climate Finance Flows: Empirical Evidence from Renewable Energy Financing" This study is an attempt to use econometric techniques for estimating publicly mobilised private finance for renewable energy. It seeks to understand determinants of private finance flows by analysing the role of public finance and policy interventions, taking into account a number of market and country conditions.
November 2014: Research Collaborative Policy Perspectives "Estimating mobilised private climate finance" This brochure summarises key messages for estimating private climate finance mobilised by public interventions: (i) In the short-term, test and implement practical methods while providing transparency about definitions, assumptions and limitations; (2) In the longer term, converge on definitions, build data systems, improve and standardise methods.
September 2014: Trinomics paper "PILOT - Tracking Mobilised Private Climate Finance by the Netherlands" The report is a first country-level pilot study of mobilised private climate finance by Dutch public finance in 2012. It describes and makes use of work-in-progress on methods and definitions, as well as highlights issues, in particular in relation to data availability and attribution of mobilisation.
March 2014: Gaia-ODI paper "Practical Methods for Assessing Private Climate Finance Flows" The report was produced for NOAK, a working group for global climate negotiations under the Nordic Council of Ministers. It illustrates a number of methodological options for measuring private flows mobilised by developed countries through their use of public finance instruments.

Tracking investments and financing to assess their consistency with climate objectives

September 2022: OECD Working Paper "Assessing the climate consistency of finance: Taking stock of methodologies and their links to climate mitigation policy objectives" This paper analyses existing methodologies developed by commercial services providers, research institutes or civil society organisations for investors and financial institutions, to assess the alignment of their assets and portfolios with the Paris Agreement temperature goal. It highlights current limitations that impact the environmental integrity of results, and make suggestions for improved and more comprehensive financial sector alignment assessment.
July 2021: OECD Working Paper "Transition finance: Investing the state of play - A stocktake of emerging approaches and financial instruments" This paper reviews and identifies the core features of twelve transition relevant taxonomies, guidance and principles by public and private actors, as well as thirty nine transition relevant financial instruments. In doing so the aim is to highlight commonalities, divergences as well as issues to consider for coherent market development and progress towards global environmental objectives.
April 2021: Independent Global Stocktake (iGST) case studies to assess the consistency of climate flows in Colombia and Switzerland These case studies by the Finance Working Group (FWG) of the iGST assess the climate-consistency of finance flows and of actions supporting this goal. The iGST is a partnership bringing together expert perspectives from the global north and south to support and independently benchmark the official UNFCCC Global Stocktake (GST) process.
March 2021: OECD Working Paper "Measuring the alignment of real economy investments with climate mitigation objectives: the United Kingdom’s building sector" This paper estimates investments and evaluates their degree of alignment with climate change mitigation objectives based on different reference points: sector-level greenhouse gas (GHG) cap from the UK Carbon Budgets, Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) bands, and Climate Bonds Initiative criteria for low-carbon buildings.
December 2020: Climate Policy Initiative papers on high-emissions finance and investment alignment This series includes three complementary research papers providing methodological developments and pilot analyses on “Improving Tracking of High-GHG Finance in the Power Sector”, “A Proposed Method for Measuring Paris Alignment of New Investment” and “Paris Misaligned: An Assessment of Global Power Sector Investment”.
May 2020: IEA report "World Energy Investment 2020" This annual edition tracks investment and financing trends across energy supply, efficiency, and research and development. Based on the latest available data, it provides a comprehensive perspective for 2019 as well as of how energy capital flows are being reshaped by the COVID-19 crisis, including full-year estimates for global energy investment in 2020.
April 2020: OECD Working paper "Exploring options to measure the climate consistency of real economy investments: the transport sector in Latvia" This paper estimates investments and evaluates their consistency or inconsistency with climate change mitigation objectives based on three readily available reference points: the EU Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities, a 2°C scenario for the EU from the IEA, and Latvia’s 5th National Communication to the UNFCCC”.
March 2020: Rainforest Action Network and BankTrack report "Banking on Climate Change: Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card 2020" This annual edition of the annual fossil fuel finance report card highlights the renewed financing and underwriting that commercial banks have provided to the fossil fuel industry in the past four years, since the Paris Agreement was adopted. The report covers lending and underwriting from 35 global banks.
March 2020: OECD Working Paper "Exploring options to measure the climate consistency of real economy investments: the manufacturing industries in Norway" This paper estimates investments and measures their consistency or inconsistency with climate change mitigation objectives based on two readily available reference points: the EU Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities, and a 2°C scenario for the Nordic region from the IEA.
October 2019: Climate Policy Initiative brief "Measuring the Private Capital Response to Climate Change: A Proposed Dashboard" This brief proposes a preliminary methodological approach and analytical framework to measure the nature and speed of shifts in private capital in response to climate change. It also outlines a way to present this information in a dashboard format, based on initial scoping of current publicly available data and methods.
March 2019: OECD Working Paper "Tracking finance flows towards assessing their consistency with climate objectives: proposed scope, knowns and unknowns" This working paper calls for further efforts to track primary investments in new infrastructure and equipment and the refurbishment of such assets, which have a direct and significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. This complements existing finance tracking initiatives that mostly cover secondary transactions and stocks of publicly-traded financial assets.
February 2019: WiseEuropa, New Climate Institute and I4CE policy brief "Domestic landscape of climate finance: Why systemic approach to climate finance matters?" This policy brief presents an overview of how tracking investment and finance flows at the domestic level can help governments and other stakeholders with data to assess progress towards national climate objectives, as well as through understanding how different actors contribute to financing climate mitigation and adaptation activities.
September 2018: I4CE report "Landscape of domestic climate finance in France: Low-carbon investment 2011-2017" This report presents a deep-dive into the method that underpins I4CE’s domestic climate finance tracking in France since 2011. It intends to support, if not inspire, actors who may wish to conduct similar work in their country, as a means to improve the knowledge base in investments and finance flows, and as a policy assessment tool.
October 2017: "Out of the Fog: Quantifying the alignment of Swiss pension funds and insurances with the Paris Agreement" The report presents results from a voluntary assessment of the alignment of Swiss pension funds and insurance portfolios with the 2°C climate goal. The analysis covers 79 investors representing around two thirds of the listed equity and corporate bonds held by Swiss pension funds and insurances companies worldwide.
October 2015: 2 degrees investing report "Assessing the Alignment of Portfolios with Climate Goals" This report presents a framework to translate high-level climate policy goals into a benchmark that can inform investment portfolio allocation. The framework generates sector-specific metrics that measure the exposure of a given portfolio to energy technologies that represent climate problems or solutions.
July 2014: "OECD Working Paper “Exploring potential data sources for estimating private climate finance" The report reviews commercial and public data sources to examine their potential for increasing coverage and understanding of the volume and characteristics of private climate finance beyond renewable energy. It suggests potential ways forward by policy-makers and researchers to mitigate, though not fully overcome data limitations.