The Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance is developing an exciting program of activities and research for 2022. Member institutions form the backbone of the Alliance, working together to advance our shared goals and raise ambition in the field of subnational climate finance to close the investment gap worldwide. These leaders shape our work by prioritizing the topics our research will focus on and by contributing to all activities and outputs, including from our three action groups as well as through various initiatives measuring impact through the Leadership for Urban Climate Investment framework.
New Action Group: How to improve tracking and estimation for city-level climate finance
This year, we will develop a new Action Group focused on tracking urban climate finance. Climate Policy Initiative, the secretariat of the Alliance, has deep expertise in this area. As cities work to develop their climate action plans, and put their climate goals into action, they need to be able to track and understand flows of finance at the subnational level, so they can better align them with their goals, identify gaps, and unlock the private investment needed for green, resilient development. This new Tracking and Measuring Urban Climate Finance Action Group will develop a methodology for city level tracking, improving the tracking of urban adaptation climate finance. New knowledge products will be produced, including a methodology for city-level tracking.
New workstream on zero carbon buildings
The Alliance is also developing a new stream of work focused on zero carbon buildings. Buildings account for nearly 40% of GHG emissions in cities, making greening buildings a key part of the solution to combat climate change (Negreiros, P. et al., 2021). This work involves the scoping of zero carbon buildings, building from our work in Indonesia and Africa, to develop a case study and knowledge products. These knowledge products will explore how to put forth the right enabling frameworks and policies to facilitate the financing of green buildings, and how we can support blended finance instruments to scale comprehensive and just net zero building strategies in cities.
The Alliance, through all its work, aims to strengthen the capacity of cities and regions to achieve their climate goals, alongside our wider goal to influence the global agenda. Through the expansion of our advocacy work, organizing high-level events, and developing key messages and policy recommendations, the Alliance aims to reach policymakers to increase ambition in the urban climate finance space.
In 2022, we will continue our work in many areas of subnational climate action:
- Within our finance workstream, we are focusing on exploring the role of pension funds in financing urban climate action and will be publishing a knowledge brief on this.
- To develop our work on strengthening legal, regulatory, and policy frameworks, we aim to further develop a tool that provides a standardized approach for analysis of enabling framework conditions related to cities.
- The project preparation workstream will focus on strengthening small and intermediary cities’ capacity to prepare bankable climate projects through strategies of project aggregation and creditworthiness enhancement.
- With CPI’s Indonesia team, we will be focusing a lot of our work in the region, including an Indonesian Forum on Project Preparation and zero carbon buildings, and case study reports on both enabling frameworks and project preparation in Indonesia.
For more information on our Action Groups, please click here
Read our 2019/2021 Highlights and Impact Report for more details on our work and achievements from the past two years