Catalytic, formerly “R20-regions of Climate Action”, was created in 2009 to work with subnational governments for the design and implementation of low-carbon infrastructure projects. In 2023, it was renamed as Catalytic Finance Foundation (Catalytic) and expanded its mandate to be a blended finance incubator and a sustainable infrastructure advisor.

At its core, Catalytic envisions to mobilise capital and technical assistance to enable the building and sustained operation of mid-sized infrastructure that aim to address climate change, gender, nature, with other relevant SDGs as co-benefits. As a neutral non-profit, with in-house expertise in finance, environmental technologies and impact standards, Catalytic provides comprehensive advisory, technical assistance and blended-finance fund design, tailored for each initiative.

We are implementing a long-term programme called the Subnational Climate Fund Initiative (SCF), designed and implemented with three other partners (Pegasus Capital Advisor, IUCN, and Gold Standard). Catalytic is executing the project preparation component of the Technical Assistance facility: sourcing projects, evaluating them for receiving TA and/or investment by the SCF’s equity investment fund. The SCF aims at enabling the building and operation of mid-sized infrastructure at sub-national level/city level, resulting in climate mitigation, adaptation, gender, and Nbs impacts. SCF’s scope is global and multi-sectoral, driven by climate mitigation impact.

In parallel, Catalytic runs a programme called Catalytic Cities which aims to create a pipeline of design-ready blended-finance funds targeting at reducing the financing barriers in specific sectors and geographies. Our current three-year focus is on port decarbonisation, e-bus deployment, and waste management, all aiming at climate impact at city level.

The operating Subnational Climate Fund has its comprehensive information all on its website: Project Submission – SCF. And all our programmatic activities are described on our website: Home | Catalytic Finance. Following us on LinkedIn is also a good way to stay updated about our work.

We welcome collaboration with CCFLA members in sharing project pipeline for uptaking projects, co-funding projects through PPFs, as well as co-investment in projects of common interest. In addition, we would be keen to discuss with interested members on collaboration for future blended-finance funds that we are designing. Please get in touch with us via: secretariat@catalyticfinance.org.

We need to be familiar with the topic in order to carry out our work effectively. First and foremost, we conduct in-depth research for designing blended-finance funds. Besides, we stay informed by following public posts on LinkedIn shared by partners, including many members of the CCFLA, about new publications and thought leadership. In addition, we actively participate in key events around the year that are relevant to the topic. CCFLA’s events are some of the crucial platforms to be informed about partners’ work on this topic.

CCFLA’s regular working group meetings give us the opportunity to be acquainted with the key partners and their activities in the space. This facilitates collaboration. Events organised by CCFLA are usually a great platform to network with partners in person whom we do not often have the opportunity to do so. Most recently, we are also benefiting from the CCFLA PPF Connector which helps bring suitable projects to us that could be of interest for the Subnational Climate Fund to provide TA and potentially investment.

Catalytic, and formerly R20, has been a long-standing member of the CCFLA. By participating in CCFLA’s member workshops, working group meetings, and events, we have been sharing insights to the CCFLA and its members about what city infrastructure projects need in order to move towards bankability and climate impact. Lately, we started providing specific advisory to city projects that have been prepared by other early-stage PPFs, for them to be able to continue receive further project preparation support from other funding mechanisms and investment consideration by financiers.