 Hi everyone, I'm kind of far back today so I'll get to get a different perspective a little bit but thank you very much for joining us today and welcome to our briefing Congress and International Climate Finance. I'm Dan Bersett I'm the president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. This is the kickoff to our briefing series what Congress needs to know about COP 28 and generally speaking our extensive resources covering the UNFCCC and that's the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Negotiations in general for the next couple months that'll be sort of the main thing that we're working on because it's really important for Congress to understand not just what the US is up to but also Congress plays really important roles in fact an essential role in the US living up to our Paris Agreement goals. I'd like to start by thanking our friends in the office of Representative Paul Tonko and the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition for hosting us today and helping us get this great room. Very briefly ESI our work dates back to 1984. We were established by a bipartisan member a group of members of Congress to provide policymaker education to members of Congress and their staff and that is largely what we are concerned with these days. Briefings like this are our highest profile activity but we also do articles and issue briefs and fact sheets podcasts newsletters all sorts of things and the whole idea is to help congressional staff have access free access to nonpartisan science-based information about climate change topics. Over the years we have also developed some expertise helping rural utilities access programs at the Department of Agriculture and specifically in order to establish inclusive on-bill financing programs for energy efficiency and electrification. But today we're here to talk about COP. This is the first of our three-part briefing series I'll talk a little bit more about that later but we do a lot of we have a lot of issue coverage right. Climate change is a big topic it covers lots of ground and so that means our resources cover a lot of ground as well. For example back on September 12th we had a briefing about research and development in the Farm Bill. Farm Bill that was the sixth of our briefing series about the Farm Bill. At some point we'll start working on a Farm Bill. I know a lot of people are actually working on it right now behind the scenes but it was really important for us to have those resources available for staff before the actual debate starts to occur around the Farm Bill. We also have some really really impressive hearing trackers going back a couple years. We also have some really cool side-by-side-by-sides that eventually will be updated with text as we get it. The whole idea is to help staff everybody is going to be a Farm Bill staff person at some point during the debate and so it helps everyone get up to speed very quickly. We also had a briefing back on September 28th I wanted to mention it was the first in our new series called IIJA and IRA Progress Report. This one was all about the tax incentives that were enacted as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. We had nine panelists talking about over a dozen tax incentives. If you'd like to get a quick overview about where those stand I can't recommend that briefing enough. We had a tremendous group of experts. Everything I've mentioned and everything and a lot more is all available and free online at www.esine.org. You may say well that's fine but how could I get all of this delivered to my email inbox every two weeks? Well we have a great newsletter called Climate Change Solutions and it's the best way to keep up with everything that we're doing and I encourage all of you to subscribe. We are here today though to start our coverage of COP 28. Our coverage has expanded in the last couple years but we always start with briefing series. Today it doesn't quite feel like it because it's in the 70s but today is the start of COP October and then after this we'll get to COP November and then COP December and then we'll come back in January with some cool new briefings but I'm really not kidding when our emphasis is going to be on this for the next couple months. There's a lot for you all to understand and the last thing we would want is for a Thursday afternoon at four o'clock your boss to come by your desk and say hey what happened at COP today or what's international climate finance or what's an MDB or what's a global stock take? My goal is for you to say well boss let me go to www.esa.org and I'll find out and get right back to you and you can be on your way back to the district or your state and you can have a nice wheels up party at the end of the day. That's our goal here at ESI but now we're here to talk about COP. While investments in climate change can be expensive or climate action can be expensive the impacts of climate change at home and abroad can be even more costly and this will be a major topic addressed at COP 28 and the stakes couldn't be any higher. Our panelists will help us understand the issues and contexts and roles of different actors like MDBs Multilateral Development Banks and answer questions like with demand for climate related finance increasing around the globe what levers are available to Congress to scale up financial flows and how does Congress's approach to international climate finance impact actions by the private sector, multilateral development banks and other global financial institutions really couldn't come up with four better people to help us answer those questions today. And to help us get started it is my privilege to introduce a special guest representative Adriano Espaillat represents the 13th district 13th district of New York first elected to Congress in 2016 representative Espaillat is the first Dominican American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives he serves on the House Committee on Appropriations and is the ranking member of the legislative branch subcommittee and additionally or additionally he serves on the House Budget Committee he's deputy chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute and we're really fortunate to have him joining us today by video. Good afternoon everyone my name is Congressman Adriano Espaillat and I am honored to welcome you to this important briefing by the Environmental and Energy Studies Institute on Congress and International Climate Finance. I have the privilege of attending COP 27 last year in Egypt where I witness firsthand the urgency of the global community to act to prevent the effects of climate change from becoming permanent. The United States has a responsibility to lead the global effort to fight climate change we need to work together with our allies and partners to ensure that we mobilize adequate resources to support developing countries in transition to low carbon and climate resilience development. That is why I am delighted to introduce today's panel of experts who will share their insights on the role of Congress in scaling up climate finance and its impact on global climate action. Please join me in walking them today. Great well thank you to Representative Espaillat and his great staff for helping him join us today. We were also in Egypt last year and it was quite the experience and we'll be back in Dubai for the first week of COP 28. Before I introduce our panelists I wanted to let you know that we'll have a Q&A period at the end of our session today so for folks in the room we'll have a roving microphone and we can take questions from the audience. If you're in our online audience and I know we have a lot of people watching online you can send us questions two ways. One you can send us an email and the email address to use is ask that's ask at esi.org. You can also follow us on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter at ESI online and get us that way. We are also going to be on Instagram today at the same handle but I think the X and email is probably the best way for today. Unfortunately we had a little bit of a change in schedule today and Bella Tonkinogi with the Climate Policy Initiative is not available to join us. She's ill today which is a bummer because Bella is amazing. Fortunately we have four other amazing panelists who are real experts on international climate finance. If you would like to see Bella's slides those are available online. Bella's slides are also included in the packet you picked up when you walked in the door. We will do our best to make up for her absence today. We all wish her best wishes and we want her to get well soon. Perhaps she's watching us online we'll see. So everyone needs to be on best behavior just in case. But to help us fill Bella's absence today I'm going to go a little bit out of order and I'm going to start by introducing Stacey Swan. Stacey has more than 25 years of experience in climate finance, project finance, impact investment, climate change, and sustainability. Her experience includes building and shaping organizations, leading teams, and delivering practical approaches to organizational and operational management primarily in the climate and investment space. She's founder of Resilient Earth Capital, an investor community with an mission to accelerate investment in climate companies. As CEO and founder of climate finance advisors she led the firm through its early establishment achieving more than 100 average annual growth since 2015 when it was founded and in 2022 she shepherded the firm through a successful acquisition. She has held senior and executive positions with the International Finance Corporation as well as the US Department of Treasury and other organizations. Stacey I'm going to invite you up to the lectern to look at the spaghetti slide and help us get started and then we'll resume with the rest of our program. Thank you. So also not included in my bio is I happen to be a board member of CPI so I feel very comfortable kind of presenting on behalf of Bella at least one thing that's important for the context of this conversation and please do look at Bella's other slides and the presentation that is delivered later because she will kind of give a lot of flavor to what you're about to see but so a climate policy initiative has been around for more than a decade and one of the things that they are best known for is tracking climate finance flows and this is really important to understand kind of where public dollars go where private dollars come from how public dollars leverage private dollars what they're what they're used for so here on if you want to kind of break down how the spaghetti diagram how to read the spaghetti diagram you have sources and intermediaries on the left side these are balance sheets of various types including government official development assistance ODA or aid money all the way down to they also track kind of corporate funding and financial institutions and private finance as you move kind of from left to right they then track how those flows move through different instruments so if you're not somebody who spends a lot of time in the financial sector this is pretty important because money goes out in different flavors obviously there's grants but there's a whole bunch of other ways that money is allocated towards climate and climate related investments and they have tracked the flows through the different instruments that they go out into the world as grants low cost project debt we'll get to this a little later I'm sure project level of market rate debt project level equity some balance sheet financing and some balance sheet financing that's equity so when you look at Bella's information and when she is able to present around this she'll go deep into some of these things and it's really important to understand how these instruments work and how the flows through these instruments go but then of course from a policy perspective they CPI does a wonderful job at dividing these flows into how their use used from a climate perspective adaptation versus mitigation and you can see in last year's accounting the majority of the flows that went internationally around climate finance were from mitigation related activities if you're not in the climate space mitigation in this particular sense is energy and energy transition and energy efficiency it's not the kind of mitigation that you would hear FEMA talk about for example which is more you know reinforcing kind of hard infrastructure but they divide the uses into adaptation mitigation because the climate international climate discussion usually talks about funding for adaptation mitigation and then they also do a really good job at breaking down the flows that they track into different sectors so how much is going towards climate related water investments how much goes towards climate related energy systems how much goes towards climate related transport systems so this is really something if you if you go to CPI's website and look at the research and the data that they track really as a kind of international best practice around tracking these flows they do a really good job at kind of really going under the hood and seeing where things kind of are going and how they're going I don't want to say too much more because this is kind of something you'll hear from Bella at a future date but really CPI is one of those organizations that does this the best I will also say a lot of these flows are international they started out there tracking mostly on international flows there's great need to do the same thing here in the United States and I know CPI is working on that particular slice they have also looked at flows for different types of countries and sectors so water in Brazil for example you can probably look on their website and see flows to that so there's a great resource for understanding kind of how the climate finance landscape of financial flows moves so I will stop there and come back on a different topic thank you that was very very helpful really really appreciate you filling in for that Stacy right well thank you so much it's really a pleasure to be here I am from climate policy initiative we are an analytical and advisory nonprofit organization with deep expertise in policy and finance as it relates to climate action we help governments businesses and financial institutions drive economic growth while addressing climate change and amongst nonprofits we're unique in our focus in particular on climate finance so what I'm going to talk to you about today are global trends in climate finance CPI since 2011 has run a global climate finance tracking program which drives evidence-based and informed discussions on climate finance so in that program we developed comprehensive analysis of finance flows we analyze data on progress against needs for climate finance and then finally we produce concrete and actionable recommendations and we've just released in early November the latest edition of our global landscape of climate finance which tracks global climate finance flows from all different sources all the way through where the destinations of those climate finance flows are and we've been doing that since our first report back in 2011 so to give you an overview of what that report includes so first of all average annual climate finance flows reached almost $1.3 trillion most recently so we track that data it was an average annual amount for 2021 and 2022 and so that has doubled nearly doubled compared to four years ago which is indeed quite a noteworthy milestone and that large uptick was primarily driven by significant acceleration in mitigation finance by $440 billion from the annual average back in 2019 and 2020 and then the remainder of the growth observed stems from one from methodological improvements and also from new data sources which resulted in additional finance flows of $173 billion so you can see that on the chart at the top right as well and then just a quick clarification of what we track and don't track our analysis covers new annual primary finance flows into climate mitigation and climate adaptation the means we really focus on real economy change on the ground climate investment at project level like the investment going into building renewable power plants we're building the adaptive capacity of local communities so moving on we know we know that that increase of finance is of course really great news however there's still a significant gap between those current flows and what's needed for a low carbon and climate resilient development trajectory and this graph here depicts what that reality check looks like and what we've calculated in the most recent needs assessment is that at least $5.9 trillion in annual investment is required by 2030 and this range of investment needs presented on this graph are based on publicly available data and scenarios across different sectors such as energy agriculture industry and adaptation and it's not an exact science but it does give an indication of the magnitude of the funds needed so what are we finding in terms of who's delivering that climate finance so first we look at public sector versus private sector finance and the overall share of tracked climate finance provided by public sources which is that blue rectangle is slightly more than half of the total both have actually increased quite substantially since our last study both about have approximately doubled so we're seeing an acceleration in both the public and private sectors but if we are to really achieve those goals of those climate finance needs mobilizing private finance at scale is really important given what what we will continue to see as limited public budgets we need to get private finance going to climate mitigation and adaptation activities and really get a step change going in that in terms of public finance development finance institutions continue to provide the majority of public finance and for private investment commercial financial institutions and corporations really provide the vast majority of that followed by households so the individual decisions that you and I make about the car that we purchase or the energy efficient appliances that we purchase is quite important to the overall global climate finance picture now when we think about where do those needs come from it's not that the finances doesn't exist we still see that fossil fuel investment outpaces renewable energy investment quite substantially so in addition 1.3 trillion climate investment that we've tracked is about 1% of global GDP so we're really seeing that it's not necessarily an impossibility to get to those climate finance needs it's thinking about how to redirect climate finance or how to redirect finance flows and how can we really see that shifting into climate investment globally one of the other things I wanted to draw attention to was around where that finance is going so most finance most climate finance is concentrated in only a few regions East Asia and Pacific Western Europe US and Canada we've seen an uptick in Latin America and South Asia in particular in India and in Brazil but we're still seeing the vast majority of climate finance and one of the vast majority of finance really flowing to three regions well that's problematic because many of those other regions are growing urbanizing industrializing quite rapidly and we really need to see them on a low carbon and resilient development pathway and finally that chart at the top shows that most climate finance is domestic so domestic investors investing domestically whereas international climate finance is about 16 percent of the total now the last data slide that I want to show is just about adaptation finance so as I mentioned at the beginning most of those increases in climate finance are really driven by increases in mitigation electric vehicles renewable energy and adaptation is increasing but quite slowly and actually as a share of the total it's going down so in the most recent study it's about five percent of total climate global climate finance or 63 billion dollars that's a small rectangle at the top in the middle and as we start to see more climate impacts of course driving more investment in adaptation becomes more critical today for really addressing vulnerabilities and and economic impacts of climate change so when we think about then how do we change how do we change the change the trajectories and really move much faster at scale to deploy more investment there's four priorities that we talked about in the latest climate finance landscape first is around transforming the financial system really across both public and private one of the main things that we have been working on this year is around the reform of international financial institutions such as the World Bank international monetary fund they're uniquely positioned to take more risk channel innovative finance and leverage to concessional finance to really expand private flows in particular in developing economies and then on the private sector side really strengthening the financial sectors net zero integrity many have set net zero targets but we really want to see those translate into concrete action second in the report we talked about bridging climate and development needs harnessing segments synergies between development and climate action makes sense and a lot of countries are recognizing that more and more because climate change and development agendas are strongly interconnected and can deliver co-benefits for nature public health energy access energy and water security among others third we really focus on mainstream and climate adaptation and resilience into into into financial systems and also mobilizing domestic capital so in particular in developing economies there's really a really an importance of using and developing local financial sectors so that they are contributing as much as possible to climate action and really to both climate mitigation and adaptation so we really want to see in particular when we talk about international financial sector reform really see that capacity development of domestic financial institutions and finally fourth really want to see more action to improve data that's not just for our own purpose but it's really because we we see data as as essential essential bedrock to making improvement the old adage you can't manage what you don't measure is absolutely true in climate finance and so we really do want to see higher quality climate finance data being developed for for many sectors where it continues to be difficult for us to track the progress and that's in particular true in adaptation in forestry and land use and heavy industry where although we continue to improve our methods we still see some significant data gaps and lack of standardization even within the public financial sector so we're really excited about this report we have seen quite a lot of progress in climate finance there's still a long ways to go and then we do see that that there are some in particular some really critical needs as evidenced on this slide for how to address those gaps and really look forward to learning more and hearing more from the many stakeholders that are watching this session to to hear how you're thinking about climate finance and what questions you might have so thank you very much national climate finance team at the natural resources defense council joe works on international climate policy to scale up funding for developing countries shift finance to align with the Paris agreements goals and reform international financial institutions to be more effective and equitable in supporting climate action before joining nrdc joe worked as a climate finance associate at the world resources institute he has also worked for non-governmental organizations on european union climate and energy policy in brussels and on un conflict prevention and disarmament policy in new york joe welcome to the briefing today you're actually an esi briefing veteran as bella is as well so really looking forward to your presentation today thank you thank you dan it's great to be back with the esi and to be here in person this time last time i was doing an online presentation and so i'm really pleased that stacey was able to step in and provide some of the global context to to climate finance because as she said cpi does an amazing job of that and i was a bit daunted to hear this morning oh might have to jump in without that but but i did want to zoom in because i think a lot of the rest of the presentations today are going to focus on on international climate finance and particularly on international flows from from richer to poorer countries that really is at the heart of the grand bargain behind the paris agreement the paris agreement essentially said we're off track we need more climate action from everyone every country needs to step up and do more but it also acknowledged that that some countries don't have as much capacity to do as as much and so and and also the poorest and most vulnerable countries who are hit first and worst have done the least to cause the crisis so it's saying everyone needs to do more but there is a need for for support for the for poorer countries to enable them to do more and so that really was was at the center of the the deal that was struck that enabled the paris agreement to get past was was was a key piece of that was the idea that richer countries should provide support to poorer countries to enable them to step up and do more and one of the sort of totemic goals around that was was the goal of mobilizing a hundred billion dollars a year that developed countries committed to do in 2009 starting in 2020 they they didn't actually meet that goal they've said that they think they will probably meet it eventually this year but that that was that was a key key piece of the puzzle that that enabled the paris agreement to to to get finalized and and so as part of that the US as the biggest economy in the world certainly has a has a big role to play in in helping meet that collective developed country goal my presentation is going to focus on on what what congress can do particularly with regard to to the appropriations bills so as i'm sure you will know the constitution sets out that congress has the power of the purse ultimately all US government spending needs to be approved by congress in in in one way or another there are the 12 spending bills every year the 12 appropriation bills when it comes to international climate finance there's only really one bill to to pay attention to and that's the state and foreign operations bill so i'm going to sort of go into some of the the key accounts to look at there when when we're when we're examining international climate finance flows and the way that the US government can can can scale those up so the one one way we we sort of break it down is between climate specific accounts and other potential sources of finance so in terms of climate specific accounts these are lines in the budget in the appropriations bill that are are undeniably undisputably beneficial to the climate and within that there are two two key buckets the first one is is under title three bilateral economic assistance that is funding that primarily is delivered via the US agency for international development USA also by the state department and some other other agencies have role in international development funding delivery but it's primarily through through those two and for many years congress has has added three lines to title three for environmental programs that that are related to climate those are clean energy adaptation and sustainable landscapes so clean energy i think is relatively self-explanatory it includes renewable energy energy efficiency things like that adaptation is is measures that that countries can take to to address the impacts of climate change includes improving agricultural resilience as well as some of the sort of traditional things you think about like seawalls and and stuff like that and then sustainable landscapes relates largely to forestry finance but also mangroves and an ocean ocean preservation and and addressing desertification things like that so so those are the three buckets and essentially what congress has done is added in three lines saying out of all the the US government's development aid in a given fiscal year we want a minimum amount to go to these three areas and they specify an amount so last year it was 260 million for clean energy 270 million for adaptation and 185 million for sustainable landscapes those are a floor not a ceiling the USA might decide that they actually they they there's more that can be done and they can spend more but essentially congress is sending a very clear message this is the minimum amount we want to see you spending in your bilateral aid on on these these three buckets of climate action then there are the multilateral accounts so these are international entities that have been created over over many years by the international community and which congress has has directed money to be spent on so it includes major funds like the green climate fund and the clean technology fund that that some of the largest these are multi-billion dollar funds all the major developed countries have paid into these it also includes the global environment facility which actually tackles a variety of environmental challenges including biodiversity desertification mercury pollution but a portion of its work is also on climate and then it includes two adaptation specific funds the adaptation fund and the least developed countries fund they 100 percent tackle adaptation and the least developed countries fund it will be no surprise to hear only works in least developed countries that's 47 poorest countries in the world and it supports them with their adaptation efforts then there's the Montreal protocol multilateral fund so the Montreal protocol is kind of an interesting one because it was created to tackle the ozone problem and to deal with ozone depleting substances but one of one of those kind of you know we solve one problem we create another when ozone pollution was phased out the substitute chemicals that were often used were highly potent greenhouse gases and I don't think people realize that at the time but now they do and so subsequently the Montreal protocol has had negotiations to actually phase out the replacement gases as well which these are these are greenhouse gases that are tens if not hundreds of times more powerful than carbon dioxide in terms of the warming effect that they have in the atmosphere so the Montreal protocol has sort of pivoted now to also focus on phasing those out and the multilateral fund provides funding to to developing countries to help them accelerate their phase out of those gases so that that has a clear climate benefit and then finally the UNFCCC the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change this is the body that hosts the annual COPS and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the IPCC so the the diplomatic body of the UN and the climate science body of the UN funding to those is also something to track so those are all the climate specific counts on the other side is other potential sources and what we mean here is is entities that the the appropriations build funds that doesn't specify that these are climate specific so the core the development finance corporation the export import bank all of these entities get get funding approved get their core budgets approved by the US government they often actually operate at no net cost to the taxpayer because they operate through reflows and through interest on on the guarantees and loan products that they offer but they do get their core budget approved by Congress but Congress isn't saying you need to work on climate but increasingly these institutions are and they're doing that for two reasons one is that the that some of them those agencies are setting specific targets the development finance corporation has a target that 33 percent of all of its activities all of its finance starting this year will go towards towards climate objectives but they're also the particularly DFC and export import bank a demand driven they respond to the needs of the private sector so when US exporters come to them and say hey we want export we want export credit assistance to to help our clean energy business to export to to other countries export import bank DFC respond to that and as you know the US is is moving particularly with the inflation reduction act to try and become a clean energy superpower and to export some of that around the world and so there can be a win-win there in terms of this is helping US companies but it's also helping other countries to roll out their clean energy and their their resilience technologies and so that that is is these agencies are responding to that demand and and scaling up their climate finance accordingly so Congress isn't saying the you need to do this much climate finance compared to like the bilateral accounts where it's very clear this is the minimum but when they approve these agencies budgets and these agencies are operating as as they do they're increasingly dedicating more of their finance flows towards climate objectives I think that's a very good thing but it's hard to say ex ante it's hard to say upfront when the appropriations bill passes each year how much ultimately will end up going from these agencies to climate finance and then there are the multilateral development banks and I'm not going to go into too much detail there because I know Valerie's going to speak on that next but these are these are international institutions all the world's governments or almost all the world's governments are shareholders in them and they too have increasingly been doing more and more climate financing and the percentages you see after each of the bank is the US voting power which roughly equates to their shareholding in these institutions so again here the US has a big influence on them they're often the largest shareholder and that means that the the US is can one can claim credit for some of the the the climate finance that they provide but also can help encourage them to do more on climate if they want to so so that's that's the other the final piece to look at what does this all mean when we start to put some numbers on it this shows this graph shows the last few years of appropriations bills and the climate specific accounts so it shows fiscal 21 the enacted bill fiscal 22 and 23 the enacted bills and then for 24 as you all know the that's currently being negotiated so instead we're showing what the house and the senate put in I think the key thing that stands out here is that the the president budget request as as as on most lines is a lot higher than what congress ultimately approves the last few years congress has approved a billion dollars in climate specific account funding the the majority of what's been approved has been those bilateral programs in the light blue but they've also approved funding for the clean technology fund and the global environment facility and as well as the Montreal protocol new and FCCC and IPCC the green climate fund has been something that the administration has requested congress has never directly approved money for the GCF but they have approved money for flexible accounts and the administration has used that to make some payments to the GCF so I think the sort of key takeaway here is that the one that the what congress has been appropriating is certainly not matching what the president has has been doing but these are the climate specific accounts and although when the bill passes we can say with certainty that a billion dollars from the US will be going to international climate that is not the end of the story if we go back the bilateral development finance agencies are all doing increasingly more on climate finance last year the DFC did 2.3 billion dollars in in in climate finance x ended 176 million the Millennium Challenge Corporation hasn't afforded yet but in previous years they've done an average of 250 million a year so I'd say about three billion from those three agencies alone on top of the one billion in climate specific and they are increasing so DFC has this 33% goal and they've recently announced that in 20 in fiscal year 23 they did nine billion dollars in climate finance so essentially three billion we can expect well sorry nine billion dollars in total finance which means three billion we can expect to be climate finance so I think those are really important to look at again you know congress does approve their core budget can kind of exercise oversight and can can encourage them to do more on climate but they don't have to specifically direct it the same goes for the mdbs and I know Valerie will get into that but I think that that's that's a key piece is that when you hear the president pledging 11 billion dollars a year in US climate finance and then you see only one billion dollars was appropriated it's certainly disappointing it would be good to see more but it's important to remember that there are other agencies that will be that will be providing more climate finance and we'll see the reporting filter through in subsequent years and so even if it's it's difficult to get more through the actual appropriations bill in terms of climate specific financing there are these are the channels there are these are the levers that can be used happy to get into a lot more detail on that later but I'll leave it there for now thank you thank you Joe that was great and you mentioned our next speaker a couple times and really looking forward to Valerie's presentation as well Valerie's lack of Valerie Lachston is a senior associate in the world resources institutes finance center where she leads the center's work to promote climate ambition at development finance institutions including multilateral development banks national development banks in the international monetary fund before joining wri she was working at the international finance corporation a member of the world bank group as a sector economist she started her career at the EU and headed to the economic and financial affairs section at the delegation of the European Union to the United States here in Washington DC Valerie welcome to the briefing today I'll turn it over to you thank you thank you very much good afternoon happy to be here thanks for the introduction so what I'm going to do is to zoom into one of the channels of international public finance that Joe has mentioned the multilateral development banks and why our multilateral development banks even discussed today why now well just a few words about back when it all started what are these multilateral development banks well they were first envisioned after world war two to help finance the rebuilding after the war of these war-torn countries and over the 20th century their mission shifted from reconstruction to economic development and poverty eradication and in addition today that actually means addressing urgent challenges which are shaped by persistent development challenges on the one hand and exacerbated by climate change and the impact there are so mdbs are part of a complex but fragmented global financial system and they were not designed initially to tackle these from the get go mdbs are major providers of public climate finance essentially and especially to developing countries those countries that need it most and momentum has built quite a bit since since the last year to reform these mdbs such that they can address the multiple challenges that these countries face even better and what does it mean well that debate started in the autumn of last year it took up speed in the annual meetings of the world bank group in autumn of last year then it was picked up again in paris in the june summit at the summit on the global financial pact and it will certainly continue to pick up speed we saw some discussions and follow-up discussions at the world bank's annual meetings earlier this month so the idea of that reform is really to keep what works and to build on these capabilities to deliver at scale and speed for those countries so mdbs today which are they i'll put up all the logos on this slide so there's the world bank group the european investment bank the adb Asian development bank the african development bank etc the world bank and especially at the beginning it was called the international bank for reconstruction and development it was created in 1944 and it's the largest with 190 almost 190 members it lends to governments and to private firms so it lends the government through ibrd through the um international bank for reconstruction and development and to the lowest income countries through idap and the ifc was established in 1955 through which it lends to private firms another banks or the other banks on that you see on this on this slide are somewhat smaller and more regional some have more regional focus they help bridge knowledge gaps expertise gaps and of course the financing gaps that exist in countries to finance their development um mdbs are part of the global financial system and they traditionally provide finance for economic development and increasingly so for climate finance the way we've talked about it today um so for example they can support countries who want to work with them to make the investments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect their people against the impact of climate change these are the two pillars that we talked about for mitigation and adaptation activities and in 2022 mdbs have committed about 60 million to low and middle income countries and 38 billion to um in high income countries it's about 43 percent of their total commitments that were specifically intended for climate finance purposes mdbs bring part of the solution and to finance financing gaps but they're not the only ones and you've seen from the spaghetti chart of cpi that there are a number of sources that um that can also provide finance for um plugging these gaps bilateral development partners other international financial institutions private financial institutions philanthropies etc so how do um mdbs provide climate finance well they can use different types of financing that i've put up on this slide um they um they use different instruments different financing instruments um climate finance provides both for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and investing in adapting activities to make them more resilient and that is done through a range of possible financing options to invest in low carbon resilient solutions these are loans primarily but also policy-based financing and few grants mdbs use a range of approaches to mitigate different types of risks and to mobilize private capital and that is definitely something that has been pushed higher up on the agenda in the past year so what's included in such type of financing some examples of mitigation finance includes support to provide clean energy improve energy access in the transport sector for example investment in clean urban transport improvements to buildings and public infrastructure and their energy efficiencies that's all in the mitigation bucket so to speak examples of adaptation finance includes improvements to wastewater systems improvements to crop and food production such that such as to minimize losses down the line improvements in terms of coastal infrastructure to reduce the loss when that coastal infrastructure is damaged and when disasters hit so investments need to be to be made up front to to reduce the impact of of those losses adaptation finance that second bucket is particularly important in small iron states and in least developed countries and this chart shows the share of total climate finance to developing countries that goes to those two groups of countries the least developed economies and the small island developing states and it's really critical that this type of finance for adaptation goes to these countries and continues to grow because they are countries that are extremely vulnerable to the impact of climate change to extreme weather events and to the impact of slow onset trucks like sea level rises etc and they are the countries that also have very limited capacity for climate action to invest in adaptation measures from from their own perspective the big gaps between the needs of these countries and the available resources why we are all here talking about this today we have to acknowledge that there are gaps in finance and investment but there's capital globally that exists but isn't really channeled necessarily to those purposes and currently there are estimates about these gaps the current global finance global climate finance accounts for around 30 percent of what's needed to align with the two degrees or preferably 1.5 degree trajectories from the UNFCCC adaptation for developing countries is about five to ten times below the estimated needs and our own research at WRI estimates that public and private investments will need to increase more than 10 times faster by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees and adapt to identifying impacts of climate change overall the long-term financing for development of developing countries needs is at least 500 billion dollars per year and that's the estimate from the UN's recent finance for sustainable development report why MDBs well MDBs can finance climate and development together they have relevant expertise and knowledge about sectors and countries that is pretty specific and they have years of experience dealing with the countries they have presence on the ground with relationships with the public and private sectors in the countries they know and have a good handle over local challenges for that reason they can support infrastructure investment but also support strengthening of institutions and policies or improve capacity building or provide capacity building in countries that is a very important function they have multiple financial tools like loans budget support project financing guarantees that they can mobilize to support countries in their climate finance and they include grants or other highly concessional forms of finance which are very sought after but rare so they're very important to a number of least developed countries in that respect they're well positioned to lead the transition to low carbon and resilient economies they've jointly committed to working together on Paris alignment to achieve the international community's Paris goals they have experience with methodologies to deliver on outcomes and impact and to assess and monitor those impacts through different ways that they have harmonized methodologies to work together on these issues and they have a specific financial model where paying capital contributions from shareholders are small in relation to volumes of additional lending capacity that they have leveraged in the past and they continue to leverage so as we implement these reforms and MDBs leave the reforms that they have been asked to go through they're pretty well positioned to support the transitions in countries. How can they contribute more to deliver on climate and development objectives and what have world leaders asked of them and what do we hear from the world leaders and notably the group of 20 that they would require for these multilateral institutions to deliver at speed and more with more scale when well the G20 the group of 20 they mandated an independent expert group that lays out a triple agenda for these institutions to contribute to bridge these gaps and it would take according to that expert group it would take MDBs missions and mandates that add global challenges to poverty and shared prosperity goals that they already have and the World Bank has just agreed to update its mission at the annual meetings in October to end poverty on a livable planet and that's a step forward. They also that group also indicated that the tripling of annual MDB finance was needed by 2030 and having new investors partner to expand MDB lending capacity including the private sector would be very important. To help support countries strategies when it comes to development and climate investments MDBs can support countries in formulating and financing their strategies for low-carbon and resilient developments they can share data and knowledge and provide technical assistance they can prioritize interventions that align with the development and climate goals and they can focus on outcomes and impact they can also increasingly work as a coherent system and in partnerships such that they all deliver to improve processes and the ways they work together to deliver more for countries. For that they need to remain well resourced should be allowed to take more risk and should really partner together so that all of the above interventions can be and continue to be a source of valuable climate finance for the lowest income countries and deliver what's needed to address their challenges. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Valerie for your presentation. Just wanted to make two quick reminders or share two quick reminders one is the slides from all of our panelists including Bella who's not with us today all of our slides are posted online at www.esi.org they're also printed copies out on the front table if you want to get them there's some really great stuff in these slides and I'm sure folks will want to go back if you want to go back and revisit any individual presentations or the whole briefing there'll be a webcast posted on the briefing page and you're welcome to do that as well and lastly we're talking about a lot of pretty heavy topics today a lot of complicated topics and that means we might have a really robust Q&A today I hope we do for folks in the audience we'll have a microphone so you can ask questions of our panelists and for folks online you can send us an email at ask that's ask at esi.org or follow us on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter at EESI online and get your questions into us that way I've already fully introduced Stacy once before so I won't do it again but I would like to welcome Stacy Swan with climate finance advisors once again up to the lectern thank you Stacy all right so I'm uh I'm going to start with um a slide that I always think is useful kind of before you get into the conversation about how to talk about financing solutions for climate change I pulled this yesterday from Noah's website this is the September temperature anomaly and it shows also kind of a historical graphic of average temperatures global land and ocean average temperatures obviously September was was was pretty out there in terms of kind of the trends we don't know if October is going to be out there in the in terms of the trends and just to kind of note a couple of things this is raw data that comes from temperature gauges both air land and ocean this is just counting kind of warmth in those three areas this has nothing that's not been interpreted in any other way so what we don't know is whether you know this one month is going to come back down or kind of where this is going to go whether this is a trend or not this is one month's set of data but if you drew a trend line through this you will see a sloping curve that is going up so we know in the science community that we're locking in a certain amount of warming over the baseline of of the 20th century average and that warming is going to have impacts physical impacts on different types of systems that we all depend on and those impacts are going to have financial consequences and economic consequences that's just a level set to kind of you know bring the climate part of climate finance back into the conversation you can go into the NOAA website and look at a lot of this data actually the way they've improved the collection of warming data over the last five years is amazing so it's there and it's there for anyone to see but that means there's a lot of climate risk on the horizon actually climate risk is here today one of the things that's changed since I've worked on climate change in 25 years is that it's no longer far off in the future we're experiencing these impacts today Hurricane Otis yesterday if anyone saw that headline it was kind of buried in a lot of our news but the most rapidly intensifying storm ever to hit the the North American coastline we have locked in warming the warming is changing our climate system those changes are having effects those effects have economic and financial consequences and that is really one of the drivers of why this becomes an issue that's not just a public policy issue but it is an all all of the above issue including kind of finance private sector and consumers the warming that we've locked in has acute and chronic impacts acute impacts as Hurricane Otis chronic impacts are things like where water is becoming more scarce or too much where droughts are occurring too much water too little water too much heat storms that are changing the way tributaries operate also kind of one of the chronic impacts from climate change from changing climate system where we grow food which is going to be a very important issue particularly internationally and food grows across state boundaries so back to some of the points about the international climate finance channels particularly the multilateral development banks bilateral development banks national development banks some of these things are in places where agriculture is a big driver of GDP there's chronic impacts that are going to be happening because of the changing and the climate change of the climate system and those financial impacts affect kind of businesses they affect those those businesses and investors and they affect kind of the sources of where finance comes from and I'll get to that in a minute obviously there's also security and migration issues and issues around social stability which has you know implications beyond just international development you know one of the in 2014 that the defense department here in the United States put out its first report on climate change and called climate change a threat multiplier and we're seeing that over the last decade in terms of increased kind of social instability this obviously has effects on on communities but the most vulnerable are affected kind of the greatest but also in the context of this conversation it puts pressures on governments but the government's balance sheets as well which is a source of capital and a source of capital that's really important to talk about climate finance and climate investment it also has issues in terms of economies in terms of capital flight where people choose to live or not live where economic development grows or doesn't grow and then obviously the kind of financial consequences to all of the businesses and communities and people there this means that today in 2023 we have increased pressure to transition to a low carbon net zero world faster because climate change is happening faster and it's already here today it's not far off in the future it's not 2050 it's actually starting to show up now it also necessitates that we invest in climate related resilience which is sometimes called adaptation but it's adaptation and resilience and this is both physical resilience to certain types of climate impacts that will happen and also economic resilience to certain types of climate impacts that will happen when you think about transition risk which is a risk of transitioning to the low carbon economy there are some economic implications for certain communities and workers and jobs and those aren't just questions here in the United States they're actually questions internationally as well if you think about how some developing countries GDP is weighted on certain types of fossil industries there's some big transition risk questions that need to be addressed and need to be addressed in a way that's just inequitable this can all be kind of doom and gloom kind of from an investment perspective or a policy perspective or an international development perspective but actually it turns out to be the most important investment opportunity of a generation it also happens to be the only investment opportunity that has a positive ROI for the largest number of people in the greatest number of places investing in climate solutions both the transition and the resilience is actually going to be net positive not just for people and not just for economies but also for financing because climate change has a lot of financial risks and we're already starting to see that show up I wanted to make another comment that I tend to do when I talk about climate finance and why finance is important for climate but there's been a lot of discussion here in this country at least for the last two years around ESG ESG is a really big term that encompasses a lot of things but ESG risk historically has meant at least the e-part has been more environmental risk and environmental risk is very important but it's not climate risk they overlap and they're connected but the distinction is um think about a project or company or an asset and think about what they do to the environment how they pollute the water or pollute the air or uh destruct habitats that's environmental risk climate risk and climate related financial risk is really what the changing climate is going to do to an asset so these are both sides of a coin they're very much connected but they're really distinct so very important to think about that when you're thinking about investment because they have very different materiality issues and points um environmental risk under ESG um has social and environmental materiality which tends to have some reputational risk but in terms of how it affects an organization the reputational risk may have financial consequences in terms of damages paid or being sued right um climate risk actually can reduce revenues it can increase costs it can change asset values so if you're a company or you're an investor and you're thinking about a construction project and that construction project needs to be profitable so you can pay your employees and make a return for your investors and that climate risk that exists for that project means costs are going up so that you're no longer profitable that's climate related financial risk so climate risk is what the climate does to a project and how that can affect financially the returns of a project um environmental risk tends to be the other side of the coin how a project can affect the environment now for those of you who work on climate change the one big part of the Venn diagram there is around emissions emissions is a project of something an entity does to the environment but they come back full circle when the climate gets warmer and starts to have greater impacts on an asset um but again lots of opportunities to invest in mitigation and adaptation here um and this is really really important because if we fix this we're doing we're really fixing kind of the financial long-term financial sustainability of the assets that we're investing in so to how we make our investments matter we talked about in the beginning we talked about the CPI spaghetti diagram and Joe and Valerie have also talked about kind of both public dollars that the U.S. government gives to international climate finance and Valerie talked about some of the channels um the the multilateral development banks some of the U.S. organizations that actually take that money and put it out into the world in different types of forms um how we actually make our investments is going to be really really important because the cost of climate risk may undermine the performance of all of our investments and assets both public and private so what does that mean if you're a holder of the public balance sheet actually the most kind of sustainable fiduciary uh responsible perspective from a fiduciary perspective and a financial return perspective is the one that runs through um investing in something that is going to reduce financial risks to maximize returns the public balance sheet um that means financial returns is both kind of preserving the capital but also the impacts and the public goods that the the public balance sheet wants to invest in oh my gosh okay um it doesn't matter where you are international domestic the public balance sheet alone is insufficient to fund climate change so just if you recall kind of the spaghetti diagram that CPI does the one that's on the website is about a year old they will update it very soon probably before cough i recall the number 650 something trillion dollar a billion dollars the needs for investing in climate related mitigation and resilience the energy transition and the adaptation resilient investments all those estimates start with a t and it doesn't matter whether you're slicing it for emerging markets or for the u.s. alone or for certain regions the amount of money needed to address the energy transition and to address adaptation resilience is so much more than the funds that are flowing right now to climate change that this is really about how to take some of the really important catalytic capital which public dollars are to unlock the private investment and that's what the cpi diagram was showing a little bit when they were showing kind of some of the the sources the instruments and the uses but also what the mdbs are good at and what a lot of public institutions are good at so private investors financial institutions play an incredibly pivotal role in scaling up and directing finance and one of the ways they can kind of pull these things together i'm going to give you an example it's in the slides i don't have much time to go through this but we can happy to answer questions but one of the ways they could do this is through blended finance prior to starting climate finance advisors i was at i f c the private sector arm of the world bank and was the person who set up and then ran i fcs blended finance department blended finance is really about taking this the patient public sources of capital and structuring it to leverage and mobilize private capital for things that might have a low carbon climate resilient outcome the blended finance work of i fc was primarily climate in the early days now they do blended finance in a lot of different ways but in a very simple kind of way to think about this money and money out the money inside of a lot of what blended finance funds and vehicles and institutions do is really sourced from public balance sheets so when valeri was talking about the multilateral development banks they channel a lot of these public dollars that are then leveraged so one public dollar to x amount of private investment to invest in something that is climate resilient or climate part of the low carbon transition that is how we are going to get from the 650 billion dollars to date to the trillions of dollars that we need to address climate change and that model can be replicated internationally it's already being done but also domestically at the federal level the state level and the local level one of the things that's happening here in the united states that's really interesting is the movement around green and resilience banks i made this little example around resilience but there's a lot of examples around green banks which are exactly this approach and i will stop them thank you very very much desi um and if anyone would like to go back to slides of course they're all available online i know cpi doesn't need my advice on anything but i do have an observation i don't think it looks like spaghetti it reminds me more of play dough like it reminds me of like something you might like shoot through i don't know i don't i know that's how spaghetti is made but i feel like that's more of a spaghetti thing so i'll bring that up with bella when she's feeling better um that brings us to our our fourth panelist today elizabeth lean elizabeth has more than 15 years of experience working in climate finance development policy international macro and macroeconomic analysis and gender policy uh elizabeth oversees the america is all in coalition for the world wildlife fund us this coalition represents over 5000 organizations half of the us population and represents all 50 states she also leads on federal climate policy work for w w f us and engages international partners to maximize climate impact in her previous role as senior advisor for international climate finance at the treasuries newly created climate hub she coordinated and elevated international climate issues treasury wide uh she has experience representing the us government and international negotiations and meetings and now she is an esi panelist so elizabeth welcome to the briefing today i'll turn it over to you thank you very much um i like that addition to the to the list i'm very happy to be here and i'm really lucky to go after these three wonderful panelists because i'm just going to draw on everything they said and and go with that all right starting the timer so um one thing that i think would be useful at this point is to think about everything that each of these panelists have talked about how that relates to the u.s. government how that relates to the executive branch the legislative branch and then what that means going into cop cop 28 is sort of this big climate moment it doesn't mean that we're going to solve something enormous in dubai on december x what it means is that you're going to have really smart people excited about making progress on this issue come together and try to make you know continue to make progress these are the thematic days that the cop presidency so that is the the government of the united arab emirates developed in partnership of course with un and what you see among all of these is that although there is a dedicated finance day finance comes up in every single one of these topics it is absolutely critical that in the multi-level action urbanization issue that you consider how are you going to finance you know cities how are you going to finance states another interesting thing this year is there is this local climate action summit that is going that is being developed right now with the ua e and boomberg philanthropies to highlight the importance of subnational action so you have of course the federal government they're making as much progress as possible these various governments come together to try to negotiate things but ultimately if the cities can't implement the the building codes that actually have impact if you can't get the states to you know offer tax credits that coupled with federal tax credits actually make progress you're not going to have the same kind of action so that's um one of the things that's different i am going to double down on the just transition um day in a little bit but as you can see um really finance comes up in every single one of them one of the things so these are these are um sort of three buckets that um at least in my mind i i think of when i think of the u.s. government's participation at cop and how they think about their work um and and where to make progress on climate finance the first is really focused on public sector programs this is very much in line with what joe talked about you have bilateral programs the green climate fund the loss and damage fund will make progress it will not be capitalized at this cop this is a longer term play um and then there is an increasing focus on nature finance um the interplay between nature finance and climate finance is is becoming more important um and you are seeing and hearing a lot more from private firms public sector officials the importance of making sure that when you think about climate finance you are also considering nature the middle category is actually one that um i think is really interesting what you will hear and see um leading up to and throughout cop 28 is the discussion of how do we focus private sector efforts or and other government efforts or subnational efforts in a way that is consistent with the climate agenda so there will be a number of bank CEOs wandering the halls of cop they will be highlighting all of their the work that they're trying to do on on climate change behind the scenes what you will also see is that the u.s. government other government european governments other partners will be talking to them and encouraging them to do more the energy transition accelerator is this kind of new concept that was launched last cop by the state department and other non-federal partners to think through how to do carbon credits in the energy sector in a way that is sort of strong and defensible that is still very much in development and then there's this question of whether we can agree as you know civil society as broader partners on how to do fossil phase out and fossil phase down the multi-party action is this third category that's where you think about um 100 billion dollar goal which was referenced earlier so far donor governments have not met that goal they will claim that they're this is the year that they're going to meet the goal probably at this cop and then of course there's the mdb evolution and climate finance agenda that Valerie talked about this is an example that i kind of wanted to walk through because there are so many moving pieces any of you who work on appropriations know very well as you'll mention the state foreign ops bill is the one that really highlights um does a lot of work on climate finance but it is not the only one so when you think about how the u.s. government could make progress in a certain area one area where the usg leaned in two cops ago was um uh in glasco these are the just energy transition partnerships so the very first of its kind was this agreement where the u.s. government in partnership with the uk and other donors got together with the south african government and said how far can you go by getting out of coal if we put money on the table um in a significant way will you commit to transitioning away from coal and investing in the renewable energy future south africa's coal facilities for any of you who know are crumbling and so this was really an opportunity for them to invest in a renewable energy future that would be much more sustainable than the existing energy facilities that are there but what did that mean for the usg just as one donor partner you can see support from department of energy they have the labs that can help doing the analysis leaning on an international partner like the iea there's technical assistance all of that is sort of bucketed in this analysis bucket that then leads to okay what are the policy reforms that you need to to see in order to actually justify this big investment we're not just going to put money on the table without some sort of give on the other side those policy reforms can come by you know asking the the world bank or the african development bank to really lean in and try to get um the south african government to commit to some changes in how they regulate energy how they um structure some of their um power purchase agreements lots of different things that they can think through of how to get those policy reforms going the coal retirement piece is really messy and it is really uncomfortable both for governments and for the private sector but luckily there is this core group of governments and private sector partners who are willing to think creatively about how to do it what kind of slice of concessional finance can we add to this private financing mix to be able to refinance this coal facility so that we shave off 10 years of its life those those are the types of questions and conversations that are happening in south africa in indonesia in vietnam um as these just energy transition partnerships continue and then ultimately how are the energy systems going to be financed the answer in large part on the end here should be the private sector most when you think about you know these large emerging markets g20 countries it should be the private sector that is able to finance a solar array that is you know um that you can plug into the energy system or or um some of the hydro facilities what gets a little bit difficult is when it's off grid a smaller market or um um if there are some other complexities right but the other big thing that I wanted to add down here there is an expectation that each of these countries are going to put some skin in the game and that includes domestic resources so that needs to come from a lot of these countries and um to make sure that they are actually investing in their in their own future okay finally i wanted to to end on nature finance this is something that i just kind of brushed past earlier on but it is something that i think is worth mentioning so there are um as i said there are there are increasing focus on nature-based solutions how to finance nature in a way that is consistent with the climate agenda and vice versa um there are different opportunities to think about or or models to think about one is this project for permanence that wwf um thinks about a lot um and these are all sort of different ways to make sure that you are protecting nature by conserving forests or conserving other types of nature um i think i'm going to wrap there and just see if there are questions thank you elizabeth that was a great way to bring all of the presentations together um i'm gonna i'll keep that up um all right well as elizabeth uh insinuated now we will get in time for questions but since elizabeth ended her presentation on uh nature and natural finance natural climate solutions finance i wanted to mention that one of the things we'll be up to during that first week is it will be part esi will be part of a unf triple c side event about natural climate solutions and so that'll be something that we cover in our daily newsletter cop dispatch so if you haven't already subscribed to cop dispatch it'll come out every day time to be late afternoon east coast and it'll be sort of a survey of events from a congressional perspective a lot of emphasis on us and natural climate solutions is something that we've specifically emphasized over the last two years as something that's interest to this audience but also is gaining in prominence um also um um if you will also be coming back to um some of these topics and upcoming um briefings as well so that gets us to q and a i have a whole bunch of questions that i have preloaded and i'm prepared to ask but i would love to defer to members of our in-person audience and so if you have a question and you can catch my eye before i start reading from my sheet of paper you'll get to go first and my friend maggie or maggie yeah maggie is going to be our our microphone wrangler today she's one of our policy interns so if you raise your hand before i can start reading i'll come to you oh maggie right next to you and then we'll go back to you for sure um hi i'm sofia i i'm a legislative analyst for uh senator whitehouse um i've been reading news about um how folks are unhappy with the world bank or the green climate fund i'm wondering if you have any thoughts about what to do with um the disagreement there thank you um any panelists is welcome to to jump in on that if you would like can you say more unhappy how hello oh so uh the less developed countries are upset with the world bank because uh it historically has not treated them very well that that's my understanding from reading brief news am i saying this correctly yeah it's a really long long long answer i don't know i mean um and and there yeah i there's a there's a whole force on like why the history of that um yeah i guess i can start and um and just say that there's a long history to the world bank and its intervention in the world and as i said it it all started um when it was about reconstructing and then the mission has shifted and one of them um one of its core missions is to um eliminate poverty and ensure prosperity and and that is arguably it's um and it's been its core mission ever ever since and now the one of the debates is um how to address both economic development and climate change or the impact of climate change together without jeopardizing um the uh the uh resources that are allocated to eliminate to alleviating poverty so this is really the um part of the debate right now coming from developing countries um and the bank has to ensure that it um actually fights poverty and continues on its core mission and its core mandate and also addresses the impact of climate change which um i should say that both are intertwined in many many respects when countries have to um to invest in both adaptation to climate change because that will help alleviate um poverty and sources of poverty in the countries as well so all of these um these challenges are somewhat intertwined but that is one part of the bigger picture issue yeah go ahead Joe so i think one of the other reasons this is coming up particularly this week and maybe this is what you've uh you've been reading about is the negotiations on creating the loss and damage fund and um there's been a push from some developed countries particularly to have the loss and damage fund hosted within the world bank and there's been a really vigorous debate on whether the world bank is the best suited institution to host that um the least developed countries particularly i think have been pushing back because um as Valerie showed that the world bank um hasn't hasn't done as much for for the the poorest and most vulnerable countries as as for a lot of the middle income countries um and then i think there's the question around like the world bank's financial instruments so that it's largely loan based whereas the lot of the loss and damage discussion is around grant finance um so i think there's there's been a lot of debate around uh is is the world bank the best uh host for that fund um and i think it's important to distinguish between the trusteeship and the host um so the world bank is essentially the host of every single multilateral climate sorry the trustee for every single multilateral climate fund um because they're one of the few entities that actually can provide those kind of trusteeship services um but then actually having them as the host of the fund is is a different and a bigger uh lift and and so there's a lot of discussion around that um whether there's i think one of the challenges is that the the obvious question is well who else would be good to do it who else um the one one option is to create a standalone entity but that will take many years to get set up the green climate fund took several years to get established it was created in 2010 it didn't start approving projects until 2015 um and there's a lot of desire to have the loss and damage fund get going much quicker than that um so i think that's one piece of it um you know there's been discussion of like whether some of the un agencies might be able to take on that role um but yeah there's there's a lot of um a lot of factors going into this specific debate about the loss and damage facility and then there's obviously all the broader broader issues around the world bank as well thanks on the gcf side i don't know if that's another one that you wanted um answered i think that one is is sort of more difficult gcf is still a very young fund as joe mentioned i mean it was created um not long ago it only started developing projects and implementing those projects through its accredited entities not long ago um it doesn't really um meet absolutely everyone's needs um i was the first gcf desk officer at the treasury department and sort of lived through the negotiations of thinking about how do you develop something that is better at making sure that developing countries have a voice because the shareholder system at the multilateral development banks has been one where some developing countries don't like this sort of that system i will say the united states government does like that system because they do have sort of a stronger voice at those boards so the gcf is still sort of um working through how to get money out the door quickly how to make sure that it's working through um entities at the country level so these these direct access facilities to make sure that resources go through um you know the rwandan development entity for instance um and not just through the world bank and the inter-american development bank and the larger banks so um that's another one where you know over a cocktail we could probably get much more cocktails wow it's only not even 330 but hey um why not elizabeth i like your style um we actually had an online question come in that was very similar to that so if you're in our online audience and you asked a very similar question that you also work for a u.s senator i hope you'll accept that as an answer i forgot when i mentioned cop dispatch to introduce my friend laura laura is our other policy intern and she has a sign-in sheet and she's going to send it around starting with the person sitting next to her if you would like to sign up for cost cop dispatch if you haven't yet this is a great opportunity to do that and we'll be sure to add you to the list we have a strict privacy policy if you sign up for one newsletter that doesn't mean you sign up for all of them all the way encourage that as well so thank you laura sorry for forgetting you a little bit ago um we had a question in the back there and um we will hear from you next and if you have any other questions we'll do as many we'll do our best to get to as many as possible i'm sharing with the house sustainable energy environment coalition we actually have a seek ocean nature and oceans task force focus on nature-based climate solutions so elizabeth you ended on the best note and i wanted to learn more about what are the ways in which we're funding nature-based climate solutions through international finance thanks um i will say that the u.s government is is there are some core programs some of them joe outlined you know when you think about some of the forestry funds um there are some some programs that do that work bilateral entities are doing that work um but in my humble opinion the u.s government is is not doing enough in that space right so i think that there are some newer models where there are philanthropic groups and non-profits and society organizations that are trying to think through ways to to lean into that space more but there are some you know some sort of smaller programs that do exist the treasury department has this um tropical forest so i can get the whole acronym tropical forest um conservation coral reef um act which is a debt for nature swap program and so if country x has um christine forests or or coral reefs and outstanding debt to usually usa id then um the u.s government can forgive that debt and those resources that would have gone to pay those um those debt payments will instead go into a fund to help conserve either that forest or that coral reef so there are some programs like that that do exist um would any other panelists like to weigh in on that in response to Sharon's question go ahead just to note that um there are a number of ways in which um nature can be mainstreamed in a number of programs that exist already at the multilateral institutions for instance because nature is such an integral part of the economy um and it's the bedrock really of our economies there are ways to mainstream um our action on nature within the projects that are delivered on the ground so that um they um they actually did deliver for um for the communities that rely on natural on nature as their um as their environment to uh to um and they like on well for for whom the livelihoods depend on nature and that is uh increasingly um an emerging um topic of research and a number of my colleagues in the world resources institute are um specialized in those nature based solutions and work with these institutions to embed that nature element in the projects um that these institutions deliver on the ground good thanks our next question is over here Maggie in the middle of this sort of block of seats um and if you want to get in line for the next question otherwise oh there you go that was easy thanks um I'm Julia I'm a economist trainee at the US ITC first of all thank you all for your presentation they were all very informative um my question's about private finance and how it can be scaled and invited more um Stacey you mentioned blended finance but I'm curious like which mechanisms you all think are maybe the most promising for the US specifically because um while carbon pricing pricing seems to take off a bit in the U with like UTS I don't know how likely that is in the US um so I'm curious what you think about mechanisms like green bonds or carbon pricing here that's a large topic um so uh if you divide the world into kind of um private financing that doesn't need any kind of blending of any any type or incentives of any type um some really exciting things are happening and have been over the last seven eight years one is that because we are better able to um identify, assess and quantify climate-related financial risks in a in in different ways it's um starting to show up in rating agencies um both of S&P Fitch and Moody's have all acquired, built and grown climate related analytics teams that are um being used to help um quantify certain types of financial risks that could come about for certain types of assets so what is the revenue cost or asset impact from certain types of climate impacts that are on the horizon mostly physical that's where they tend to be more comfortable transition is a whole different kind of exercise um but uh that is bringing building awareness and understanding among investors about this being a financial risk it's drawing those connections which is really important the other thing is we're seeing a lot a lot a lot of dynamism in the insurance sector insurance in this country is very complicated federal state local and insurance and re-insurance but the fact is that you have 13 insurance companies that went bankrupt in Florida in the last 11 months not 12 months 11 months um these are um frontline underwriters are having a hard time underwriting a portfolio of hazards or perils as insurance people tend to call them and that um as for those hazards or perils that have planet fingerprints they're starting to get out of the business or being forced to go bankrupt that's also a signal a risk signal for investors there's a lot more to that than just that headline and insurance is a really dynamic and interesting industry but mainstream climate a mainstream financial sector is really starting to take this very seriously not as a do good thing but also as a i gotta protect my financial upside thing um or set a different way i look at a whole bunch of risks when i make an investment now i have to look at climate change too because that actually has financial risks so that's positive in my view because that's behavioral change for investment i think you couple that with the um catalytic incentives that um some of the policies federal and state that are out there and you have created real momentum around an investment thesis that investors are really excited about um one of the things you know there's consequences of all these things that one of the things that you see at a global scale is you see a lot of funding coming to the united states because of the way we are repositioning the um positive investment potential here around climate because of the IRA and the GHDRF that's on the horizon so there's a lot more to say about that but um the blended part is really where you take the public patient concessional capital to catalyze private investment when it might otherwise not happen filling some gaps there that's also happening in at a scale that we've not seen ever before and which is pretty exciting great uh any other comments from our panel on that Elizabeth just very quickly i just wanted to double down what stacey was saying about the IRA i mean um the economic policy team at treasury has done some really um good quick analysis for IRA investments and the numbers are something like 100 projects announced um totaling 200 billion dollars over that first year period and the guidance isn't done yet right i mean we're still waiting for these poor tax economists and and tax lawyers at the treasury department to figure out exactly what the rules are going to look like for certain portions of the IRA and um and yet still we're seeing this enormous investment in the united states based because of the IRA incentives um that was passed just a little over a year ago thank you and i promised that we would get to you for your last question really word for word incredible okay fair enough well we are just about at time um i'm going to do a quick rapid fire question just to give every panelist an opportunity to give a last word and it's a little bit of a vert it's a variation of the one we talked about before i'm going to give you an option you can either give us an answer to one or both of these questions what is the biggest change or shift and this is this is lightning round so this is you know lightning round what is the biggest change or shift you've seen in international climate finance since cop 27 you also may answer what is the biggest international climate finance issue you look forward to seeing addressed at cop 28 and joe perhaps we'll start at you and we'll just run down the line uh interested in what you think about that sure thanks um yeah it's hard to do really quickly but i think i think for me the biggest shift has been uh the scale of finance that we're starting to talk about we we are well past the you know the hundred billion goal hasn't been met to be very clear and it should be urgently but i think we're now as as Stacey mentioned we're talking all entirely in the trillions um uh in terms of um of finance needs and i think that's been a really helpful shift because it really focuses minds so when we when we're talking about reforming the multi-lateral development banks reforming the international financial institutions um we have a benchmark to measure it against last year at cop pretty much there was a a a report by uh Vera songway and Nick stern led this high-level commission on climate finance and for the first time they had a really clear number on what the needs the finance needs climate balance needs in developing countries were 2.4 2 to 2.8 trillion a year is 2.4 in the middle um by 2030 of which a bit a trillion of that um would need to come from international sources public and private so now we have a benchmark so when you see the mdb saying well we're gonna uh with these reforms we're going to get 20 billion dollars more a year it's like nice cool but we need to be aiming for for a trillion and what what role should be playing towards making up that trillion dollar so i think that's been really helpful and i'm looking forward to those conversations continuing thanks Valerie you're lightning around response sure so for me it is this realization that is um amplifying that public um and private funds will be needed and as well as domestic and international it's like all hands on deck and coming from all the sources of that spaghetti diagram that was shown earlier on um so that is really the quantity effect that that needs to happen and is really needed one nugget of good good news coming from the mdbs is the fact that um there are climate finance two developing countries has been increasing this year um and that is sorely needed and also the share of adaptation uh finance um has increased slightly since since the past years so that is really adaptation that adaptation finance that those countries that need it the most um will will definitely uh be counting on and that share of adaptation finance rising is a small nugget of of hope for the years to come thanks stacey i will pick up on that i've got a lot of thoughts but i'll pick up on that one which is not just a share of adaptation financing but the share of private investment in adaptation and resilience i think that has been a big shift in the last uh really recent couple of years but you know again we have locked in enough warming that we have we're seeing and feeling and experiencing the effects adaptation and resilience has to start now uh really should have started a long time ago but that that share really needs to grow um and as it relates to mitigation energy transition i actually think we have 20 years of experience to think more creatively about how to be efficient with our public dollars to maximize private investment and that's also showing at the cop uh at last year's cop and at this year's cop in terms of the people that are at the table um the stakeholders from the private invest investors set who are interested in the low carbon net zero transition um is just growing and that's great thanks and elizabeth you get the last word today um thanks and i'm going to pick up from that from what stacey was just talking about um at cop 26 you will have seen these huge numbers of private banks 130 trillion dollars of assets under management committed to net zero what i'm most excited about are um those banks actually developing their transition plans and figuring out what that means they all sort of got together because mark carney asked them to to get their announcements together and it was really impactful and an important signal what it means today is that now we have these enormous financial firms that are actually holding their clients to account asking for transition plans and then themselves developing their own to figure out exactly what that means to be net zero with a five-year target with a 10-year target for the 15-year target and i'll do a last plug the u.s treasury department put out principles for net zero um just recently secretary yellen announced that a climate week in september check it out it's good reading great thank you very much i think our panelists deserve our applause today for being such thanks to everybody for joining us we hope to see you back on november seventh for what's on the table for the negotiations and then we'll be back on november 27th uh for the first global stock take that first global stock take one will be online only because that's the day before anna and i leave for july um but the other one the one on november seventh i think will be in the gold room in rayburn so you won't want to miss that um i would like to um thanks or share thanks once again to representative espiot and his great staff for joining us today via video remarks and sharing his thoughts major thanks to representative tonko and his fantastic team you specifically uh and the sustainable energy and environmental environment coalition for helping us get this great room today uh it is these these rooms i know they're a little inconvenient but like the technology is really good and it's really good so thank you very much for that um big thanks to my colleagues at esi i'd like to thank dan o anna omery molly nicole allison and erin um we met laura and maggie because one of them had the clipboard and the other had the mic but zoe was taking photos and she's our other amazing intern uh this fall so big thanks to you and troi couldn't do it without you um all of our live cast audience owes you a debt of gratitude as well and i will close with once again saying thanks and uh get well soon to bella we look forward to um being able to see you again soon i hope you're feeling better we'll go ahead and wrap there sorry for going a little over but we'll be back on november 7th thanks