CFF launches report on climate projects in cities at GCAS

A new report, launched today at the Global Climate Action Summit, demonstrates just how fast cities are taking action on climate change. Cities are where most of the world’s population lives and where most of greenhouse gas emissions come from. However, despite the emergence of initiatives supporting cities to develop projects addressing climate change, there has been limited discussion about what these projects look like and over what kind of technical assistance they require.

Although there are numerous financing and funding instruments available to cities, this report, co-authored by the C40 Cities Finance Facility (CFF), CDP, and in collaboration with the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM), is the first-ever in-depth analysis of infrastructure projects around climate change in cities. It shows that there is substantial demand for support on how to prepare and finance projects around climate change in cities. Almost 400 cities are asking for support for 1,143 projects worth close to US$60 billion.

 
The report finds that there are projects across sectors, regions, and of many sizes.

• Projects in the Energy & Buildings and Transportation sectors represent the largest share of projects in cities.
• In terms of capital investment, there is both a large number of small projects (45% are below US$10m) and a considerable amount of large projects (20% are above US$100m).
• The potential impact of these projects is enormous, both in terms of climate benefits and co-benefits.
• There are projects at all levels of preparation and support is needed across the board, including at the earliest stages of development: almost a third of projects are at a preliminary stage or undergoing scoping.
• Although the most commonly cited challenge to implementation was gaps in technical knowledge, the majority of barriers are city-specific: cities describe issues such as institutional coordination, stakeholder engagement, regulatory issues, public opposition, electoral politics and lack of political will as key challenges.

This report argues that national governments, banks and others should make sure that the existing demand for climate projects in cities is met, and that more resources for project preparation are needed, particularly in the early stages. To achieve maximum impact, all support from organisations working in the field of project preparation must be tailored and contextualised and accurate project-level measurement of climate benefits and co-benefits is required.

To limit warming to 1.5°C, cities in developing countries cannot follow the same carbon-intensive pathway adopted by cities in the past. Building on a previous publication by C40 and CDP identifying a pipeline of sustainable infrastructure projects in C40 cities, this report outlines the characteristics of climate-related projects in cities across the world, particularly in emerging economies. Its findings aim to help organisations working in the field of project preparation understand the key characteristics of projects addressing climate change in cities and how to best structure their support to ensure the implementation of these projects.