The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance’s Climate & Transition Finance Programme builds on a decade of leadership in alternative finance, and deep expertise in the assets, instruments, actors and activities which are driving and changing the financial landscape.
Our Climate & Transition Finance work includes globally comparable market research and benchmarking of global best practice approaches to funding & scaling-up adoption and transition. We aim to:
- inform approaches to scaling-up, and accelerating the adoption of, transition solutions
- identify key levers (technology, infrastructure, policy, regulation) and priority countries for key transition sectors
- investigate appropriate capital and financial structures to optimise impact and enhance the effectiveness of catalytic capital deployment
- evidence the potential of new approaches to capital deployment and nesting solutions structures which can be scaled across markets and climate verticals
The problem
Despite over a trillion dollars a year being deployed to climate finance globally, global emissions continue to grow, and the negative effects of climate change, including more extreme temperatures and climate-linked natural disasters, continue to increase. Up to 3.6 billion people are now living in regions classified as highly vulnerable to climate change.
A step-change is required to achieve global climate goals:
- by 2030, annual global climate finance needs are expected to reach between USD 6tn and USD 12tn
- USD 2.4tn of annual funding is already required for developing countries to meet their transition, adaptation, resilience and regeneration needs
- this requires a more than fivefold increase in global capital flows, and for the catalytic : private sector capital mobilisation ratio to reach 1:9 in EMDEs, up from 1:0.2 in 2023
- eighty-five per cent of the technologies required to achieve the necessary emissions abatements by 2050 will come from technologies that have been validated but not scaled. Support for these solutions is required either to reach cost-parity or to demonstrate full deployment at scale
CCAF’s approach
Our focus is on investigating the levers and capital structures which can enable the transition to happen, in doing so we are also assessing existing investment and scale-up approaches, taxonomies, outcomes and market gaps. We have developed four key areas of focus, driven by research and real world engagement.
Expertise
The Centre is specialised in translating theory and empirical data into tools and practical solutions capable of shifting markets and mobilising large-scale private sector participation. Through this program we leverage our expertise in navigating complexity to deliver real-world impact, and in working with funders deploying catalytic capital to drive transformation. Our robust global network facilitates the crowding in of private capital and enables seamless collaboration between the public and private sectors to address climate transition challenges at a system-level.
Contact
If you are an investor, catalytic capital provider, government, project owner, or business in a transition sector and would like to engage or collaborate, or if you are interested in learning more about our work, please contact us.