 Good afternoon everyone, my name is Carol Werner, I'm the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute and on behalf of EESI and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, I am happy to welcome you to this afternoon's briefing taking a look at the whole issue of how does foreign climate aid benefit the United States. We are very privileged this afternoon to have someone with us who has been involved at the very highest levels in terms of looking at this issue in terms of an important mechanism called the Green Climate Fund or GCF that was set up in conjunction with the International Climate Negotiations. We also are joined by someone from the German Embassy whose country has been an important leader with regard to climate and energy strategies that have really helped move and the whole clean energy economy globally in terms of the innovative financing strategies as well as very active commitments to deployment of clean energy. And we are also joined in this panel by someone who is actively engaged in financing projects so that you'll get to see the whole sort of sweep of what's involved in looking at this very, very important topic and why it's important because with regard to thinking about foreign aid and and particularly foreign aid for developing countries in terms of thinking about climate and why this is good for the United States, why it's in our national interest, what are some of those reasons? Are there good business reasons? We're going to hear more about that this afternoon, but also in terms of thinking about what this means from a humanitarian, from a resilience perspective, because we certainly know that over decades and decades in terms of the history of the United States that the United States has often, I would say probably always been in the front line in terms of providing assistance when there are disasters, when there are humanitarian crises, and this is a way in which we can perhaps help ameliorate and prevent some of those disasters, some of those human needs by creating greater resilience in societies, which can further economic development and overall business globally. So we're going to hear more about how all of this works. How does the Green Climate Fund work? Why is it relevant to the United States and to our current situation going forward? How does all of this work in terms of thinking about priorities with regard to foreign policy, with regard to development assistance in terms of the global community of which we are all apart? So I want to start by introducing Dr. James Bond, who is the former Senior Advisor to the Executive Director of the Green Climate Fund, where he served in that capacity for three years. As a Senior Advisor to the Executive Director, their headquarters was in South Korea. He is also a managing director at Public Capital Advisors and throughout his multi-decade old career, he has held a number of positions at the World Bank Group and he has also been a Senior Advisor with the African Development. James. Thank you very much, Carol, and I think you're probably the only person who's ever called me doctor. So thank you very much for that too, but I'm a doctor in economics and not in medicine, so I can't fix whatever you have. My name is James Bond. It's an interesting burden to carry through life and I'm a financial advisor and I worked on the Green Climate Fund after Korea and the World Bank. I've come to talk to you about the Green Climate Fund, but I think more generally about climate finance. I want to talk about, set the climate fund in the climate finance framework and then I wanted to say a word about why I think it's a good, there's a good business case for the U.S. to support the Green Climate Fund and similar initiatives. But first, let's talk a little bit about what is climate finance and our friends over at Climate Policy Initiative. This, by the way, is a wind farm up in Lake Dockon in Kenya, where I was financial advisor, introducing electric power in Kenya through wind. But let's talk about the flows and this is difficult to read, but I think the most important thing here is that Climate Policy Initiative have worked on who's financing what with climate finance and essentially we believe the needs, the world needs, seven to eight hundred billion dollars a year to address the climate issue. Is that a lot of money? It's billions, hundreds of billions. Well, to set things in perspective, the world spends about two and a half trillion dollars a year on infrastructure generally, roads, ports, airports, electricity, water and sanitation and the like. And so we need about seven hundred to eight hundred billion and currently about 391 billion dollars are flowing to climate, to the kinds of projects that we need to put in place to address climate. So there's a big effort going on, not as though nothing is happening. In fact, 56% of what we need to finance is being financed today. But the question then is where's the money going and if you take a look at the analysis, essentially it's going first of all to mitigation, that is to reduce CO2 emissions and not really to adaptation to help us adapt to the climate change and the effects that come from it, things like rising sea levels and storms and so it's dealing with mitigation. It's going to developed countries, 87% goes to developed countries, 13% to emerging markets and 72 comes from the private sector, 72% the rest going from the public sector. So that's what it looks like today and if we take a look at what we need in developing countries in emerging economies, we probably need about 430, 450 billion dollars a year in financing. We're getting currently about 35 to 50 and we need 430 to 450 additional financing to put in place the kinds of investment we need which are climate, let's say climate-friendly electricity generation, the kind of power plant we did in Lake Takana, solar, photovoltaic solar energy generation, adaptation to help communities deal with rising sea levels and increasing the arid agricultural environments, that this kind of thing. So that's what's needed and the question is how would one ideally if we're an economist, I am an economist, how would you put the kinds of investments in place? What are the different ways economists look at how one does this? The first of all, climate change and GHD emissions are what we call a global externality, they're essentially something that no one country can deal with. We have to go through, we have to work through collective action and collection action across borders is very difficult. The costs are not borne by the polluters, so the people bearing the costs people who have housing along Benin, the sea level that's rising at the moment, they are not the ones emitting and they can't take the right kinds of action. So the economists talk about the first best, the second best, and the third best we're ever dressing. The first best is to internalize the externalities, to make sure that there's ownership of the problem and that those who own the problem can fix it. Now what do we mean by that? The US has had an extraordinary successful attempt at doing that with sulfur dioxide emissions in the 70s. The US put in place a cap and trade and essentially eliminated a problem which was a major environmental problem in the US at the time, and it doesn't exist anymore or hardly at all. Similarly went on with the NOx, the nitrogen oxides. So the first best is to provide ownership rights and to basically allow trading amongst polluters and people who have the rights. If you can't do that, the second is fiscal policy and that's pretty good. Setting in place fiscal policy will set in place a price for carbon in this particular instance which will change the behavior of investors to make the right kinds of choices in their investments. And what's interesting to me in this country is in our, let's say, somewhat unusual dialogue about climate change and about the environment generally to see that the oil companies are very much arguing for a price, a carbon price and for a fiscal approach to this. So this is something that I think is not an ideological discussion. It is a second best, but a very effective way of essentially getting investors to do the right thing and to make the right decisions. And if you can't get first best and second best, the third is for governments to finance the incremental cost for the people who would need to take the decisions to invest in the right in the right kinds of technology. And that is what the world decided to do with the Green Climate Fund. To say, we can't get first best. There's no way we can provide tradeable sort of cap and trade system at the international global level. We can never get a global tax system, one global tax system in place for all 197 countries that are members of the UNCCC. So let's go for third best and let's use the third best to try to influence change. Unfortunately, it gets a little bit more complicated because there are some investments which actually would save money. There's no incremental cost. If you do things like on the left-hand side, like increase the installation and housing or go to small run of the River Hydro, it actually you would make money compared to the baseline. So as many things that make sense from an environmental point of view, make sense in terms of extra return for the individuals today are not being done mostly because of market failure, not having the right financial instruments, not having the information and so on. So the world decided to go with the third best solution. Let's put in place a financing mechanism to finance the incremental costs for those who need to take the right investment decisions in emerging economies. And they did this within a framework, which is the International Climate Architecture, International Climate Architecture is essentially the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UNF CCCC. And this is a UN body that was created in after the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. So that takes us back a quarter of a century and it groups essentially all the countries of the world. 197, I mean the number of countries varies depending on how you talk to, but it has 197 members and essentially the UNF CCCC is a body that tries to bring together all the countries to take action on climate. And it has two sort of technical emanations. One is what we call the International Panel on Climate Change, the scientists doing this work on identifying what is happening on the climate and they actually have existed since before the UNF CCCC. And the second is a much more recent animal called the Green Climate Fund, which is the principal financial mechanism to channel resources to emerging economies to pay for this incremental cost that would need to be covered to make the emerging economies take the right decision. So politics behind this. Politics, the world actually came up with a greenhouse gas emissions reduction at the Kyoto in 1995, but it only included the rich countries. And between 1995 and essentially about 2007, 2008, the developed countries tried to get emerging economies, the developing countries, to sign up and to make a mission reduction commitments. Initially, it didn't matter too much because most emissions came from the US and Europe and Japan, but over the course of that period, developing countries started to be a major part of the problem, in particular China, but also India, Brazil, countries like that. And essentially the argument made at the UNF CCCC by the emerging economies, by developing countries was, you know, it's all very fine. You guys developed, you've developed since the late 18th century or the mid 19th century. You've put all the CO2 in the atmosphere. Your CO2 is causing the problem. And now you want us to make an effort. You want us to bear the costs of less development so that basically you could deal with the fact that you are now being impacted by the CO2 that you put out in the atmosphere. Now that's a very short argument and it's not a very robust one, but it is the argument that was made. And essentially what was decided eventually was the rich countries, the developed world, would essentially help the developing world by funding a portion of this incremental cost. And they would, in order to do so, they would create a vehicle and that vehicle would be the green climate fund. So eventually, thanks in a way to the fact that the green climate fund was put on the table at the negotiations, we were able, the world was able to come to the COP 21, the conference of the parties, 21 at Paris, November, December 2015, at which for the first time a global agreement was made to limit GHT emissions. It's not going to be enough to hit the two degree target that we went for, but it's still a first step in the right direction. The text is not binding. There's no way. I mean, we're not going to, if for example Uzbekistan doesn't respect its commitments, we're not going to send in the tanks of the Marines. I mean, I don't think that we have a way of sanctioning. But it is a commitment by the countries and above all, it's a major market signal to the private sector. The private sector can now know the private sector is already funding climate sensitive investments in countries like the US and Europe. But now you can do this also in emerging economies because the countries themselves believe in a framework where this makes sense. And so it's an enormously important market signal. And it doesn't provide for a carbon price, but you do have the green climate fund. So then what is this green climate fund we talk about? And by the way, this is about the greenest picture I could find. So I don't know. It's not particularly applicable to the green climate fund, but that's a beautiful picture. So the green climate fund is the main operating entity under the financial mechanism of the UNFCCC. That's its definition. I mean, when you get into the UNFCCC, there's a whole jargon that takes a while to actually learn, which doesn't seem to have much of a resemblance to English or any other language that you're acquainted with. But eventually, you do understand what it is essentially. It's the financial instrument. It's a financial vehicle. It was established in Cancun at the COP 16. By the way, another point about the UNFCCC, why I enjoyed working with them for the three years I was there. They always have their meetings in the most wonderful places, Bali, Cancun, and so on. But essentially, so the GCF's mandate is to promote a paradigm shift. I apologize for the spelling mistake. A paradigm shift, another term that I'm not very fond of, but essentially what they mean is we have to change the direction. It has to be a totally new way of approaching climate finance. We, during the course, in a way, was the plumber on the fund. I was the person underneath doing the pipes and these kinds of things, and the board approved this. And on the basis of this, we went and saw the potential contributors, the rich countries. These were often countries I'd actually dealt with in a previous incarnation at the World Bank where I spent 25 years, and we had got pledges of about $10.3 billion. So let's talk again numbers. The world needs $700 to $800 billion. The developing countries need $430 to $450 billion. At Cancun, they said rich countries will transfer $100 billion. Now we're down to $10 billion. Okay. So it's kind of a shrinking pile, but $10 billion is a lot of money. I mean, make no mistake, $10 billion is still a lot of money, particularly if you think that the aim of the $10 billion is not to solve the climate, but to a change behavior of private investors so that they will come and make the right investment. So you get the maximum amount of private leverage. The $10 billion should be able to leverage an additional $90 billion, which then together should show the others that this makes sense from a market perspective. The first investments were approved in November of 2015. When I did the slides, $2.5 billion had been approved, equivalent to about close to $5 billion in total project size because the fund only funds a portion of it. And they just finished a board meeting where further investments were approved, about a billion. So how does the fund actually change compared to others? Because there's the global environment facility, there are various private funds. How can it be different from all of these guys? And why put money in a fresh fund and not use the global environment facility, the World Bank, the UNDP, one of these bodies? So the thing is the fund is different in a number of aspects. And first and foremost, it's a fund of funds. It's not going to create 15,000 employees based in Songdo. There are 15,000 people at the World Bank. It's going to keep 50 or 100. It's going to be truly like a private fund and work through partners, partners that are credited and who have undergone a due diligence to make sure that they know what they're doing, that they have decent accounts, that there's no money laundering, that they have all of the aspects that you need to make sure the money is safeguarded. The second, when we did this, when we took a look, we said, how can this be different? The World Bank lends for climate, it lends about 30 billion a year, much more than the fund. Well, the difference is the World Bank is AAA and it doesn't take risks. If you're AAA, if you're rated AAA, you use your money very, very prudently. And that means you don't take risks. And our contention is the issue in emerging economies is not so much the liquidity requirement, but the fact that no one is willing to take the risk. They're not willing to take the risk on the country, they're not willing to take the risk on the climate risk, on the market risk and so on. So what you need is a body that will go in there, fund that will go in, to essentially pick up that residual risk so the rest of the project has a much lower risk profile and can attract money from the private sector or from the outside. So it's essentially de-risking, that's what it does. The third is, and this is very unusual and I'm very surprised we got this through the fund's board. The fund has the richest set of financial instruments of any public finance body I've seen. Everything from equity, quasi-equity, senior debt, sub-debt, guarantees, partial risk, partial credit, full guarantees, everything excepting insurance type products. The fund doesn't do insurance type products because it's a different treatment on the balance sheet, the capital is treated differently, and it doesn't do derivatives, it's allowed to do plain vanilla things like swaps, but for the moment the derivatives aren't available. But otherwise it's as rich as any investment bank, it's richer than many investment funds, so this makes it very unusual. It's going to try, we saw that no money is flowing to mitigation, that's difficult to finance mitigation, I'll be honest, but the fund has, and so far has respected this, a commitment to balance mitigation and adaptation funding, and so far it has respected that. And then it goes, it has a balance for the poorest countries, there's the most difficult to find the financing, what they call in UNFCCC speak, SIDS, LDC, SSA, SIDS are small island developing states, LDC is the least developed countries, SSA is sub-Saharan Africa. And then finally, the whole idea to mobilize private financing, we don't want to solve the problem, we want to put in place the kind of leverage that will help others solve the problem. It works through partners, these are some of the partners, they're more now, but the partners involve UN agencies, UNDP, UNEP, big multilateral banks, World Bank, Inter-American Bank, Development Bank, African Development Bank, EBRD and the like. Through NGOs and through the private sector like Deutsche Bankers is accredited and Acumen Fund is an impact investor. So again, just like the products are very wide, the partners are very wide, and this is great because you can tailor, if you like, the right partner and the right instrument to this particular need. For example, a project the fund has financed is to help small scale farmers in a river delta in Senegal deal with the fact that rising sea levels are increasing the salination of their soil and making it more difficult for them to continue the traditional agriculture and it's helping them adapt their agriculture to the changing nature of their soils. That you can't put an equity stake or a guarantee on something like that. That's something that you would do as a grant. On the other hand, the fund has helped through many SMEs, many small and medium enterprises in Africa improve their energy efficiency through lines of credit and small loans made through banks. And in this case, it's using what's called a financial intermediary loan that's run through one of these credited partners through commercial banks ending up as loans and credits to the small and medium enterprises. So it's a different each instrument and each partner can be tailored to the specific problem that the GCF and its shareholders want to solve. I'm going to go quickly because I think I've spoken enough here, Carol, but what I will do, it has a very rigorous evaluation mechanism to know what it funds or not. I won't go into the detail, but you have it in the handouts. And I want to talk to this slide. This is my concluding slide. So why would you want to do climate finance, especially in today's world and today's environment here? You know, it's philanthropic, helping these developing countries. Aren't they all corrupt anyway? And they never develop. Getting involved in climate finance is good business for the United States. Supporting the GCF and providing the similar kinds of support in emerging economies to the climate change is good business for the U.S. And it's good business for two reasons. First of all, the global climate problem can't be solved without global, without efforts across the board. Today the U.S. has the biggest economy, but in about five years the biggest economy in the world will be China. And China today emits more CO2 than the U.S. So it's great for the U.S. to make an effort, but without global action we're not going to crack this nut. And we need an instrument like the GCF to bring these increasingly emitting countries on board to make them change the direction of their climate emissions. And this is good for the U.S. because essentially it reduces the costs of things like, you know, insurance for major storms, changing agriculture, and those, the kinds of argument that are absolutely conventional in climate change. But also it's good business for a second reason, and that is COP21 has triggered a huge surge, and this is something I actually work in. I'm no longer with the fund, has triggered a huge surge in the development of a new asset class, climate-friendly infrastructure and emerging economies. It's what I do for a living now today, and it by the way pays pretty well, so I'm not complaining. But, you know, if the U.S. wants to be part of this new business, supporting something like the Green Climate Fund gives you a seat at the table and makes you one of the key stakeholders. It's going to happen anyway, and if the U.S. doesn't want to do it, it will be done, it will be done by others, it will be done by China and India and some of the other nations. And I think it's actually in the U.S.'s interest with this relatively modest support it provided the Green Climate Fund to be a founding partner at the table and to make sure that the U.S. companies, firms, banks, investors profit from this new emerging asset class in emerging economies. So Carol, that's all I want to say. Thank you very much for allowing me the chance to talk about the Green Climate Fund today. Thanks very much, James, for providing that kind of an overview and in terms of sort of also looking at how this has now kind of morphed into your new area of work, which is picking up on exactly what you were doing but putting it into practice on a daily basis in a new frame as well. So now we are going to hear from Anton Huffnagle, who is the Environmental and Urban Affairs Officer with the Embassy of Germany. Anton manages a very diverse portfolio which involves climate, environment, and urban development. But because this is also the year of the German G20 presidency and the upcoming COP23 in Bonn, it also means that he is having a real focus on international climate policy. Anton previously worked for Germany's Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety in Bonn, and he also had worked in London for J.P. Morgan. Thank you Carol. Thank you ESI for hosting this panel. First time I was here was late last year for another panel hosted by ESI. It was a wonderful opportunity. You met a lot of very interesting people at the time. I'm happy to be here speaking this time. Perfect. So as Carol just mentioned, I only recently joined the German Embassy here in DC, moved last September. I was asked somewhere in early 2016 whether I would be interested in representing German environmental policy to the United States. I was thinking, well, that's a no brainer. That's an easy job in a great country. The other destinations were Nairobi, China, India, and my wife. She wasn't too excited about those. And now this has moved into a very interesting undertaking representing not only German environmental policy, but especially our climate policy and policy of the rest of the world to a new administration that sometimes needs a little bit of convincing here and there. But I'll speak about Germany and not the United States in this presentation, especially our efforts with national climate finance. Our international climate finance efforts are part of a comprehensive strategy that encompasses domestic efforts and our international efforts. And of course domestic efforts are very much at the center of politics. Germany has established a feed-in tariff in 1990. So when you installed solar panels on your houses roof in 1990, you were able to obtain government funding for that. It has now evolved into something we call the Energiewende or the energy transition, which is a very clear set of targets for our energy system, our transport system, our industry to transition towards a carbonized world by the middle of the century. But of course, as James has pointed out, climate change is very much of a collective action problem. If Germany alone decides to end climate change, that's probably not going to happen in our borders. But we will need international cooperation and cooperation has made a major step forward with the coming into force of the Paris Agreement in 2016. From now on, we will be focused on the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the rest of the world is focused on the implementation of the course of the climate finance and climate aid to the developing world as brought as the buy-in of the developing world equally. What is the energy transition or the Energiewende entail for Germany was basically these four goals that were defined in 2010. One of the goals came a little bit later, but in 2010 Germany decided that we would be 40-45% renewable by 2025. In 2017, we're at now 31% renewable energy in our grid, up from 10% in 2005. That's a major change to our energy system. We are for industrialized nation of this size, we are the first nation to accomplish this share of renewable energy in the system. It's creating advantages, but it's also creating some issues in an economy that's as highly developed and as reliant on its energy system. As we're figuring those out, we're positioning ourselves as a model for the rest of the world to follow. We're positioning our industry as the leading industry when it comes to sustainable energy systems. In 2011, the German parliament decided to completely phase out our nuclear power plants by the year 2022. 2011, of course, was the year of the Fukushima accident. At that time, the German parliament decided that there was a risk that Germany, a very densely populated country in the middle of Europe, did not want to take going forward. So, we took that decision in 2011 and we have, in 2016, phased out another nuclear power plant. Currently, five nuclear power plants still on the grid, down from 17. 17, those will be completely gone by, have an emissions target by 20% and lower emissions by 40%. We are somewhat on track. It could be doing a little bit better when it comes to that target. And we have an efficiency target that is defined as 20% less energy consumption by 2020. There is a lot of discussion, especially here in the United States, that seems to create a link between energy consumption and growth, or energy consumption and economic prowess, so to say. I remember a presentation given here at the Heritage Foundation, somewhere late last year, where they were showing a graph and you basically saw a very straight line, a regression line linking energy consumption and growth. It is not true whatsoever. There is a certain linearity there when you come from places like Somalia, Afghanistan, and you progress to the likes of Sweden, Germany, and Europe. After that, energy consumption increases further. A typical U.S. household consumes about twice as much energy as a typical German household. There is no effect on GDP. This means you are less efficient. While energy prices in Germany are actually twice as high as they are in the United States, that does not matter because our energy efficiency means that our households are spending the exact same amount they are spending on energy as they are spending in the United States. We are just driving maybe different cars. Maybe they are traveling in trains. Maybe their houses have actual insulation, but this kind of link that is being portrayed by growth is certainly not there in the developed world, and we are able to prove that by increasing our efficiency and lowering our energy consumption. That is the energy vendor happening in Germany. There is a lot of discussion whether you are able to do this, whether these goals are actually attainable in an industrialized country. This is just one of the graphics that shows that Germany is actually doing very well, and we need to be doing very well because we want to keep our industry. If we are doing an energy transition that eventually leads to every German company moving abroad, and it is not that far away to go to France, Poland, or wherever, that is not going to happen. So in order to do this and keep our industry in the country, keep these very strong companies whose cars are being sold in the United States, whose chemicals are being sold over here, et cetera, we need to maintain an energy system that is as reliable as it has been in the past. This statistic shows you that its reliability is still pretty much unchallenged worldwide. This graphic shows you the average duration of customer interaction in minutes, but what happens when you have a blackout? How long does it last? In Canada, blackout lasts about five hours. In the United States, blackout tends to last about three and a half hours. In Germany, blackout tends to last about 12 minutes. This is something you can accomplish by burying your electricity lines underground. This is one of the ways to get your statistics here, and of course this is somewhat of a burden for a household. If you want a Netflix, you haven't charged your computer, and this happens on a Friday evening. It's a catastrophe for a chemical company such as Bayer, where basically the entire factory is shut down for a week of a blackout that lasts longer than half an hour, for example. This is what we're doing in order to, our industry and the country, keep our economy strong, while longer-term goals and the extra plan 2050 that we presented in Marrakech at COP22 last year, along with the United States, Canada, Mexico and France, is a mid-century plan that outlines our long-term targets for 2050, together with sectorial milestones, sectors would be the energy sector, the transport sector, the agricultural sector for 2030. The reason why, and this was actually taken by the G20 under Chinese presidency, the G20 countries developed these climate action plans, these mid-century plans, in order to create certainty for investors. If an investor is deciding whether he wants to build coal-fired power plants, a pipeline, or a microgrid, solar panels, wind turbines, needs to look at much longer time horizons. Which is one of the reasons why you don't hear anyone in the coal industry in the United States at the moment talking about building new coal-fired power plants. A coal-fired power plant has a life cycle of about 50 years. In an environment where energy policy changes every four years, nobody is going to make the significant investments that we need in order to create the sustainable energy systems for the future. Why a number of countries in the United States among them have created these mid-century strategies in order to create that certainty. Whether the certainty is actually going to be there in the future in all of these countries, of course, is up for debate. Industry is very much behind these mid-century strategies. If you speak to large corporations, no matter which sector, and James mentioned this, the oil sector, for example, is very much behind a carbon price. They're also very much behind these mid-century strategies because they give them room to plan. If I'm building a pipeline, if I'm building a refinery, if I'm building solar panels in Texas, wind in Oklahoma, I need to have a long-term framework for these mid-century strategies. But once again, Germany, by coming up with all of these great strategies, is only talking about 2.16% global emissions. I think this is a number from 2014, so we might be somewhere closer to the end by now because the rest of the world is still playing catch-up. But it's not a problem we can solve alone, and this is why we have this climate political framework, as what James called it just before, where the world comes together and decides on strategy to deal with this collaborative action problem. Not a problem that anyone can solve alone, and she mentioned by Mr. Tillerson in his hearing here in the Senate, climate change is a collaborative action problem. We will need to come to the table, and the United States wants to remain at that table in order to discuss the solution. The framework for the solution is, of course, one that was heavily influenced by U.S. policymakers, the UNFCCC, created in 1992 under the Bush 41 presidency. And now, of course, the Paris Agreement of 2015 created by, in large part, a new leadership consisting of the United States and China, of course with support by the European Union and Germany. In the Paris Agreement for the very first time, developing and developed nations have pledged to contribute to a world where global warming will be kept well below 2 degrees Celsius. The goal gave ourselves in 2015 up in Paris, and in 2016 when the Paris Agreement came into force, this became the goal for the 197 parties to the convention, out of which at the moment 142, including, of course, the United States, Germany, were ratified. The time now is for action. This was, climate action was a phrase that was coined at the conference in Marrakech last year, and it will remain the focus of international climate collaboration at COP23, which will take place in Bonn in Germany this fall, actually hosted by Fiji, but since Fiji saw some difficulties in hosting the 50,000 to 60,000 people that usually arrive to these conventions, Germany decided to offer our facilities at the very beautiful city of Bonn on the Rhine. It's not Cancun, it's not Bali, but it's a very beautiful city. It's a very beautiful city. I've worked there for a number of years, very romantic to give you a chance to make it. Fiji and Germany very much welcome you too. Of course, all of this was brought about by the commitment by the developed world to the developing world, in which industrialized countries in 2009 actually at the conference of the parties in Copenhagen at the time, pledged that they would provide 100 billion off climate aid to developing countries per year by 2020. And this is, it's a somewhat surprising number, and it needs to be read correctly. So this is 100 billion not once, but it's 100 billion that will be provided per year annually, starting in 2020. And it's not like the rest of the world or it's not like the industrialized part of the world is currently saving for its first payment. We made in 2020, but actually we are providing finance every year. And I think in 2016 about 67, the OECD numbers are 67 billion were provided. So we are in a way. In 2015, as part of the Paris Agreement, industrialized countries reiterated this goal and the developing world asked us to then please provide a roadmap of how we're planning to get there. How are we going to get to the 100 billion? In 2016, less than a year later, industrialized nations came together and submitted a roadmap to the conference in Marrakesh. And this roadmap with the help of the OECD basically lines out that we are on track and that the 100 billion goal will be reached by 2020. Of course, this is due to significant pledges by the United States, but by virtually every other country in the developed world. What is Germany's roadmap? These are our climate aid numbers from 2005 to 2015. This is a trend that we will follow up until 2020. So in 2015, Chancellor Merkel announced Germany would again double its climate aid from the 2014 number per year and we would again double that number by 2020. So in the year 2020, Germany will provide about four to five billion per annum in climate aid. Where is this money going? Some of this money is going to direct bilateral aid. So very similar to other development aid, Germany is looking for promising projects in a number of countries around the world and we are supporting these projects. This gives you the split between global or cross-regional undertaking. That is our bilateral aid in millions as of 2014, I believe. This is the share of adaptation versus mitigation funding. We are very close to the 50-50 split. Mitigation and adaptation is making up the rest. I think the Green Climate Fund actually has a goal of 50-50, which is not that easy to accomplish. There has been in the past more of a focus on mitigation. That is changing at the moment. We can see that Germany is very close to reaching similar numbers that the GCF has set itself. The developing world, of course, is very much interested in getting as much adaptation money as possible. They foresee that adaptation is going to be a major issue in a lot of countries. Just today, not today, but I read the cable today, so this must have happened earlier this week. The Security Council of the United Nations had its regular meeting on climate and security. One of the speakers was the representative from the Republic of Kiribati. Of course, we iterated that they will just see their islands sink if money is not spent on mitigation. For a lot of these countries, this is a matter of life and death and adaptation money, especially relevant. We are trying to provide as much of that as we can. When it comes to multilateral climate aid, and this is of course where the GCF and other finance mechanisms are coming into play, we see the Green Climate Fund as the principal multilateral foundation of the Paris Agreement. Germany is very much committed to the Green Climate Fund. Germany has contributed a billion USD. This is not a pledge, this is actually money that has flown into the fund as of today. We are foreseeing to increase that number by the next funding period. Out of the about 10 billion that are in the fund currently, one tenth of that is German money. Germany has a seat on the board. We are trying to make the Green Climate Fund as efficient, as possible. To accomplish the goals set by the Paris Agreement. The goal of the Green Climate Fund, of course, is to enable developing countries to do mitigation adaptation strategies. We saw that as part of the Paris Agreement. Every country for the first time has formulated its nationally determined contributions. Its own plan for the future and how it wants to mitigate climate change, but also how it wants to adapt to climate change. For a lot of these countries, some of those undertakings are going to be going to need foreign funding. Green Climate Fund is going to provide that funding. There's a number of other mechanisms. There's the Global Environmental Facility based here in Washington. Part of the World Bank Group. There's a least developed country fund and a patient fund. Of course, the multilateral development banks, such as World Bank, are very active in this endeavor. We'll be next week at the spring meetings, for example, when Germany is actually sending two delegations. One of those is a development delegation. The other one is a climate delegation to underline our climate commitment as part of our World Bank funding. What I've talked about now is the public side. This is all public money. We're talking about a billion that's gone to the GCF. That's all public money. We're talking about the four billion that are going to go to climate aid by 2020. That's all public money. We know that this is a problem that cannot be solved by public money. What we really need is a change of financial flows. This is one of the main findings of the Paris Agreement. That the world wants to make finance flows consistent with a pathway towards lower climate resilient development. We need not just public investment, but private investment to reflect the goals of Germany following a two-fold approach. We are offering special loan facilities. If you are engaged in a resilience project, for example, in a country where you see significant risk, we would ensure you against that risk. We are also helping partner countries to design similar enabling environments that are making development aid that's flowing into the country. Generally, now reflect the goals that we have been on in our climate. How do we make this aid effective? This is an undertaking that a number of countries have come together and formed the NEC partnership for. Again, the National Determine Contributions. The partnership that was launched in Marrakesh last year has bring together developing and developed countries. It is helping developing countries to actually find their NECs in the first place and find strategies to implement them. When they have these strategies, they are then able to more significantly and in a more efficient manner to use the climate aid that is going to them. This is an endeavor where Germany is very involved. It is one of the funding partners. We are working together with the World Resource Institute across the street from the Union Station where the NEC partnership is located. I think the overall title of this briefing was Climate Aid in the US interest. I cannot talk about the US interest, I can only talk about Germany's national interest. Germany is one of the different numbers, depending on who you talk to, where number one or number two when it comes to climate aid in 2016. Why is Germany spending these ridiculous amounts of money on international climate aid? How can this possibly be in our national interest? There is a lot of talk about national interest right now. Some of that talk might be more short-sighted, some of that talk might be more rational. I want to briefly give you the rational reasoning why we are doing all of this. Number one, we are supplying the technology for more. Germany is not a country that is very rich in resources. They are very rich in engineers. We are not exporting oil, gas or coal. We are not planning to do so in the future. We are exporting engineering ingenuity, whether that is in a Mercedes, whether that is in a biochemical or whether that is in Europe's largest solar plant. You can see in the picture here, it has been built by a German consortium in Spain. A lot of these decisions that countries are making at the moment concerning their energy infrastructures are systemic decisions. When you decide to embark on this transition, there is no way back. You realize pretty quickly that it is not just a solar plant here and maybe a wind turbine there, but it has to become an integrated system. Germany is a provider of these integrated technologies. We want as many nations in the world to be able to use these, so we are helping nations. The news of today in the German media was that Germany for the very first time has accomplished its ODA goal, official development assistance. 0.7%, so this is 0.7% of our GDP in 2016 was spent on development aid. It is a goal that was defined by the United Nations in the 1970s, I believe. A number of Sweden has been consistently above that number since the 1970s. There are about four or five other nations that have also reached this goal. Germany has reached its goal for the very first time in 2016, so we are spending significant money on development. We want to spend this money on development that will be there in the future, but we want it to be resilient. We don't want to build villages in Africa that will be taken down by the next drought or by the next flood. It is in our interest to make our development money resilient, so we are spending it on resilience. Finally, there is a very clear connection between climate and security. This has been reiterated by then-General Mattis at his hearing here at the Senate when he described climate change as a significant risk to the national security of the United States. Climate change has led or has amplified a number of conflicts in the world already. With climate change freezing, climate change becoming even more prevalent. We see that nexus between climate and security amplified. Regions of the world that are at great risk become succumbed to new conflicts. Germany is of the opinion that money is better spent on preventing conflicts than it is on military endeavors, entry and conflicts once that it isn't. We see our climate spending, our security spending. Finally, in our national interest, a collaborative action problem might not be dealt with in a world where everyone is putting his nation first and is merely thinking about once we realize that climate change is an issue, there will have to be a decision that we will need to collaborate and put our national interest in some decision making, not in the first place. Finally, global interest. Thank you very much, Anton. I think that was a really helpful look at how a country like Germany is really developing its policies over the last couple of decades with regard to climate, economic development, resilience, what this means and how to go about it in this very comprehensive, thorough way that we can all learn from. We'll turn to our third panelist now before we open it up for discussion with all of you. Our last speaker will be Brad Johnson, who is the president of Resource Mobilization Advisors, which is an international consulting firm that designs, facilitates and implements private sector financing of environmental infrastructure projects in emerging markets. And he also is a member of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, which is an organization which EFI works with mostly. He is on a board of a corporation focused on commercialization of innovative technologies. And he also very recently won the 2015 Bloomberg New Energy Finance Award for solar lease financing in the Caribbean. Thank you, Carol. I don't have a presentation. I think that Anton and James have given you a very good comprehensive overview of climate finance and where it's coming from and where it's going. I'll focus more on basically the Green Climate Fund, mobilizing private sector investments and why it's important to U.S. industries. I think the first point that's important to realize is U.S. technology in the renewable energy space is the best in the world, but also more expensive than technology from China, for example. So you could have, you could be a company or a government or a family looking to install solar panels. And if you're paying cash, that five or 10 percent differential in cost between the U.S. solar panels and Chinese panels is substantial. And you're likely to go with the Chinese panel because you want to save money. Once you introduce financing, long-term financing, that price differential disappears. So if you can provide 10 or 15 year financing for a U.S. panel versus a Chinese panel, that cost differential is no longer 10 percent. It's pretty much neutralized by the long-term financing. So it's very important to look at these financial instruments in terms of their impact on the market and their benefits for U.S. technology. I'll give you an example. When Solar City many years ago first introduced the solar lease concept in California, there were five major solar installing companies in California. They all had basically the same market share going across the page. But they were all basically knocking on your door saying, you want to buy a solar panel, we'll sell it to you for cash, or you can go to your bank and get a loan and buy the technology. A lot of people thought, well, that's great, but I'd rather keep my money for a new car or send my kid to school or so on and so forth. And once I buy it, I own it. And if the panels break, it's my problem. It's a great New Yorker cartoon, a woman standing above the stove and her husband's on a ladder. And you can only see the lower part of his body and she says, can Hiram call you back? He's fixing the solar panels right now. So that's one of the impediments to the sale of solar panels. Solar City came forward and said, will lease finance the panels to you? No upfront cost. We'll own the panels. If they don't work, we're out the money. You're not out the money. The introduction of that financial mechanism increased solar cities market share by 30% in two months. So financial intervention can have a real positive real impact on the market. And also I think the Green Climate Fund's role in this process is to help mobilize local financing the extent it can because currency risk is becoming a bigger issue for investments and currency risk as you get into longer-term financing becomes more of an impediment to financing. Most local banks in developing countries only lend 7 to 10 years. The shorter the loan period, the higher the annual payments, the more expensive it looks to you as a client, customer, over 10 or 15 years. If you can get local banks to lend for 10 or 15 years, it becomes a much more attractive, again, local financing mechanism. We think the Green Climate Fund can play a major role in beginning to introduce more long-term local financing for renewable energy. James talked about the many financial instruments and modalities the Green Climate Fund works with. We think that's one place where they can really have an impact. Another thing I'll say on behalf of U.S. industries is, at least from our experience, when it comes to, I'm focusing on U.S. China. I don't know, maybe it's because of the recent visit of the president. But in the Caribbean and Central America and Latin America, if they're given a choice in the price differential is not great. Virtually every customer wants U.S. technology. It is because of after-sales service. They're afraid if they buy Chinese technology and it doesn't work, they're going to have a hard time finding that company again to come in and fix it. Whereas a U.S. company is closer, more reliable, more inclined to have representatives in countries, and that's helpful. So there's a lot of things the Green Climate Fund can do to help U.S. industries expand their market share globally. And there's a huge market out there. If you look at, as a comparison, New Jersey, which is the same size in population as the Dominican Republic, has installed 1,500 megawatts of solar. The DR has installed 60 megawatts. So there's a huge potential in all of these developing countries for U.S. industries to go in and expand their market share and expand their business. With regard to the Green Climate Fund, I'd have a couple of recommendations. I think they should get rid of any kind of technical assistance that they're working on. They have a readiness program, which helps countries prepare for the Green Climate Fund. But there's been so much technical assistance provided to countries through bilateral aid, the Germans, USAID, the World Bank, that I don't think is needed. And I think the money would be better spent for the GCF to focus on projects, financing projects exclusively. It's not that the technical assistance is so much more expensive. It just takes a lot of staff time to design it, to work it out, to compete for the consultants, all that sort of thing. The staff at the GCF should be focused exclusively on developing projects. A second thing I think is very important is that GCF should really focus on governments as a client of renewable energy. In the U.S., we have mobilized more than $4 billion in private sector financing for government renewable energy and energy efficiency projects over the last 10 years. Mostly military bases, but in every country you're in, the single largest consumer of energy is that country. In every city you're in, the single largest consumer of energy is probably that city. To give an example, we're currently working in Jamaica with the National Water Commission, which is a commission that provides water for all the cities in Jamaica, the Grille, Otorio, Smontego Bay, Kingston. They are the single largest consumer of energy in Jamaica. We're looking at doing about $15-$20 million of investments in energy efficiency upgrades and solar technology for Jamaica. I'll end on a request from all of you. That is this, that the National Water Commission is eager to do it. We have investors. I have investment funds. They're eager to invest in this project. But we have a problem with the IMF. The IMF or countries that have certain levels of debt reach agreements, they stand by financing agreements. And they typically limit the amount of debt a country can take on. In this work that we're doing with the National Water Commission, the National Water Commission is considered a government entity for government debt purposes for the IMF. So no matter if we do it as a lease financing, off-balance sheet, public-private partnership, if there's any kind of contingent liability in the financing structure, IMF will step in and stop the transaction, even though it will reduce the government's annual budget by reducing their energy consumption. So there needs to be a little more coordination among international organizations on these kinds of issues. But I think the Green Climate Fund is a great, great concept, deserves a lot of support, can be improved, everything can be improved. And I think U.S. business has a great opportunity to take advantage of it once the fund is fully operational and going forward at full speed. So thank you for your time. If you all would come up to the table and we will open it up for discussion for your questions. And I would just ask you if you could go to the microphone here so that the people who are listening to the live stream can hear your questions. That would be great. Okay, go ahead. Great. Tim Judson, Nuclear Information and Resource Service based here in Washington. Just curious, if you guys can kind of give an overview of what are the critical decisions that need to be made at COP 23 this year and how does it relate to the GCF and what should we be paying attention to and looking at? We actually had a discussion on the COP that's coming up right now. I think at the COP in Paris in 2015 there was an enormous amount of media attention. All the heads of state arrived. And that was good because we came to a result. The cops that have followed or that are going to follow the COP in Paris, Marrakesh, Bonn in 2017, 2018 will be Warsaw, I believe, in Poland. Have a different objective. The objective is implementation. And the objective is to basically follow up on the technical gaps that were left open by the Paris Agreement. One of the major gaps and these are important decisions that need to be made. It's just somewhat more difficult to portray them in a very media savvy way. So one of the gaps that will be filled or that we hope to fill at the COP in Bonn this year will be the discussion at MRV, monitoring, reporting, verification of emissions. So all these countries, I think we have 195 NDCs that have been submitted. They have defined their goals. Now it's a matter of are they following up on these goals? How can we verify that they are hitting their emission targets? And that takes international coordination and it takes definition of what is an emission and how do we monitor it? How is the reporting being done? Is there some way of verifying statistical information that's being given by the country? These are very tough negotiations because it means for countries that, for example, not define their goal as emissions per se, but as carbon intensity of their economy, for example, that you will need to provide transparency not only on your emissions, but on your entire economy. What is your GDP? And there's statistics on that, but how can we verify these statistics? I think a lot of the focus in Bonn will be on the MRV discussion and how do we actually now follow up on the NDCs and verify that countries are on track of reaching them. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you for being here. I have two questions actually. The first is I'm wondering if you expect to see any developments in a couple of weeks at the mid-session in Bonn in terms of climate financing. And second, given that the parts of our federal government, the administration, has even outlawed the use of climate change in certain agencies as the term climate change, do you think that any organizations will start reclassifying their climate aid as things like resiliency or biodiversity, or have you started to see that yet? First part of the question, the midterm, are there going to be decisions on climate finance? I'm not sure. COP certain will be announcements at the time when these kind of deliverals are being announced. There's still a gap that remains to be closed between the 67 billion of last year and the 100 billion of 2020, so I'm sure there will be commitments. The kind of general response we've had to the U.S. elections and the questioning that has taken place here in D.C. is an absolute lack of questioning in the rest of the world. So no matter who we speak to globally, every nation remains as committed to the Paris Agreement as they have in the past. The global response seems to be that we'd be excited to have the United States on board. It would be very important to have the United States leadership, but it's not going to change anything for our national policies if the United States decides to take a different course. So I think that will be a message that you will hear in Bonn as well. The second part of the question was on reclassification, sure. And this is something that there's probably a dozen of very highly trained people at the OECD that are in charge of classifying climate aid, as climate aid were in charge of making these very strict definitions that then classify something, but it's not a very strict definition. So when I'm involved in a reforestation effort, for example, in developing country, certainly part of that is mitigation. Certainly part of that is even adaptation because I'm maybe fighting erosion, but that's also creating livelihoods for the local population. So that's traditional development that's been going on for decades before we ever heard of climate change. So I think a lot of the work will go forward and maybe under a different grad. Brad, I just wanted to ask you, did you have any thought in terms of the situation that the U.S. now is in, in terms of some of these international discussions, and kind of the message coming from folks like you in terms of the U.S. business community and what those messages are to the administration with regard to the international situation? Well, I'm working with the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and helping to develop that message and getting it to the administration and others. I don't think it's a good idea to try and redefine what we're doing as something that's not what it is. I think it should be a straight-on battle on the merits. I think that the funding questions can languish for a while. The Green Climate Fund is not going to spend all this money in the next year or so. I think it's more important to prepare a long-term strategy than to do quick fixes in the short term and try and prevail on those points of view. I think the private sector has two groups. Basically, there's the private sector investors, the banks, the investment funds, and then there's the private sector technology providers. The technology providers are kind of an afterthought often when these organizations begin to think about what they can do to help. There could be more of a focus on that message about it's not just financing that's going to solve climate change, it's technology and it's the deployment of technology. As you saw in the example of the Dominican Republic, we're not asking for state-of-the-art nuclear power plants. We just want to install solar panels like we are in New Jersey, but they're not being installed. I think there's tremendous potential for the U.S. industries to expand their markets in these countries, but they need greater financial solutions to do that. Great. Thanks, Fred. I just want to say with regard to the Dominican Republic, surely there's got to be a way to work the whole baseball situation in terms of their exports to the U.S. in with PVs. Okay, Jared? Thank you, Jared Blum, EESI chair. Great presentation. The question I have is given the dramatic reduction in the cost of various types of renewable energy of solar and wind down 70, 80 percent to say the least, shouldn't that change in some respects the Green Climate Fund's focus? I know it's 50-50 adaptation and mitigation. Shouldn't we really be doing more on the adaptation side? Wouldn't that be an easier sell for a variety of governments to say this is part of the public health and safety issue? This is actually more something they can grab and see more easily, adaptation issues. So would you not think that there would be a move to move money to that area? It's a very good question. And you're absolutely right. You saw that curve that I projected on the left-hand side. We had stuff that makes sense of its own. You don't actually need incremental money, but it's not happening. And on the right-hand, it takes an incremental cost to do the right thing. And in fact, what you're saying is that more and more of these activities are actually moving left into the area that makes sense on their own. But they're not being done. They're not being done in an emerging economy for a number of reasons. Probably the most important is that they're not the right kinds of financial instruments. They're not the risk-bearing instruments. It's not the kind of thing that Brad said about the need to essentially come in, say, with a leasing solution which lowers the upfront costs and spreads it out over the life of the investment. So this is something the fund can do, although to ensure that there is the diffusion of these technologies that make sense, sort of to overcome the market failure that's occurring that's preventing them from getting deployed. On adaptation, you know, you're right that this is what needs to be done. The thing about adaptation for the Green Climate Fund is that adaptation essentially generally involves activities that don't generate underlying revenues. They make a lot of sense economically, you know, putting up a seawall in Cottonoo or in Lummi, but essentially you can't charge somebody for the seawall. The question then is if the fund is very much trying to mobilize private financing, adaptation is actually very difficult for the Green Climate Fund to do like others. So the Green Climate Fund in some way should also see on adaptation the same kind of a role that they should be mobilizing others but not necessarily private sector because you can't but perhaps mobilizing other public sources. Then somehow this is the logic behind it, you may be right in the long term, but this is the thinking at the board level how to balance these two activities of mitigation and adaptation. Follow-on, it's a great question. I think if you look at these NDCs that each country's put forward as their plan to meet their promised reductions and carbon emissions, you will see there's no, I don't think there's a single country that says we want to install solar panels and even with GCF support we're going to raise rates on our customers to pay for that. Invariably every plan and almost every proposal that's gone to the Green Climate Fund has mixed the two. The cell mitigation is also a part of adaptation and as James said it's very hard to monetize adaptation. It's a good question, it's an issue whose answer goes beyond my pay scale but I do think if climate change is the challenge it is we need to go full force on reducing carbon emissions as much as we can and if there are adaptation aspects to it, that's great. But I think to focus on adaptation is at the expense of mitigation would be a mistake. Thanks Brad. At the same time I think you're also both saying that in terms of mitigation investments we need to make sure that they are done in a way that they enhance the resilience of that infrastructure or those local communities because otherwise that would be growing. Embedded adaptation. Exactly, exactly. One more point. I mean there's a lot of proposals to increase production of food on existing farmlands as a way of creating a disincentive for deforestation which is great but you also have to understand that there's a great amount of carbon emitted through food waste in the world. And if you're going to expand food production as an incentive not to deforest you're going to have to have something to deal with the increased food in the food chain to eliminate the carbon emissions. They say the food waste if it were a country would be the second largest emitter of carbon and so there needs to be I think understanding the interplay between the two is very important. I think that's a really, really important point that all of this always needs to be looked at very holistically and too often we could do that. We'll take these last two questions, okay. So Ashley wants to ask you about private sector. There's a lot of black money out there especially in Europe like a lot of corporate hoarding. Starting up 2.5 trillion dollars US has in black money right now. Is there any talk on like trying to get that money implemented towards these project development that sees more rationally you know is there any discussion on that kind of progressive strategy? Not quite sure that we understood. I'll handle it. I mean dealing with black money sounds intriguing to me but. So like amount of corporate hoarding like you know like how much Google, Microsoft, Apple is holding international corporate amount of money they don't bring it back because they don't want to because they don't want to be taxed. So what I mean is they just put it up in the international markets and don't let it go so that's black money now basically so can we use that money as a private sector incentive to actually you know. I mean I think the key thing about climate finance and emerging economies is there's not a lack of money. There's a lot of money out there. We take a look at institutional investors so forget Google, Apple and Netflix and those guys. Institutional investors essentially people managing pension funds and people managing insurance assets. I think they basically control something like it's a stunning amount. A hundred and twenty trillion dollars worth of assets. The world GDP is about 75 trillion. There's a huge amount of money out there but it's not going into climate finance or climate friendly projects and emerging economies. And the reason it's not going is not because there's absence of money but because the risk profile is preventing investors from going in and feeling sufficiently comfortable that they'll get their money back with the kinds of returns they need. So this is the issue. The issue is not one of lack of money. It's of excess of risk. We have to change the risk profile of these kinds of projects and emerging economies. I think that that's the realization that's come to pass with people like WRI and the World Bank and people like Brad and so on. They've basically understood the obstacle and the obstacle is this one of risk which is sometimes political risk. Countries have unfriendly environments for investors. They may be unstable. The Dominican Republic may I don't know Brad knows. So each country has its issue but also in climate there's a technology potential technology risk which is declining all the time that still exists. And then there's one about will you know a government come in and say change the environment and declare that we don't deal with climate change anymore. And essentially under sort of undermine the entire investment framework in which the investments being made. Hence the interest of our companies to have a carbon price to set some predictability for the long term even in this country about their investment programs. The question then ultimately is managing the risk that is preventing climate climate friendly projects from being invested being financed in emerging economies. If I could just add one comment to James. Every country we work the local banks are flush with cash both local currency and foreign currency. And they're not investing as James mentioned because of risk and a lot of times it's simply perceived risk. It's not real risk they just don't have the training to understand the risk to be able to evaluate it. So the dark money the corporate funds that are out there is a possible way of doing it. But there is a rich resource of local bank financing in every country we've been in that needs to be focused on and mobilized to address this issue. Thank you for being patient. As a free market guy I heard especially Dr. Bond mentioned a couple of times and I think read by implication of market failure. And yet most of what we've been talking about especially in a question and answer has been institutional government failure. And I'm not convinced that going down this road balances out where the failure is or where the opportunity is. And having less faith in international institutions to not get captured. And you pointed out a mass levels of corruption. And also there's a level of mistaking local incentives for like for example the charcoal trade as a deforestation issue is not farming it's making charcoal. Well that's madness. We have this thing called fossil fuels and it's much more dense than charcoal and on and on and on. But going back to the market failure versus the government institutional failure I think that that's fundamental and I guess I have a greater trust in the markets assorted out than I do in the institutions. This is a great closing comment. Thank you very much. I think take a crack at it. What I've done since I've left the world the Green Climate Fund is essentially infrastructure in low income countries finding ways to finance it. If you take a look at things like a port or an airport and specific ports. Let's talk about the important tem and Ghana. You take a look at financing electricity infrastructure in Kenya. The wind farm here. What is it that I do. These projects had great returns. I go in they have much better returns than anything in this country or Europe. Great return or Dominican Republic. Great returns they're not getting done and they're not getting done for a number of reasons. Sometimes because of the power plant the off taker KEPCO say Kenyan power company is not solvent and you're not sure they get paid back. But oftentimes it's simply that there isn't the financial instrument able to basically extend long term debt financing for as long as the life of the asset. These banks are lending the securities market in Abidjan which covers eight countries of West Africa. I think typically it's only done one bond of eight years. It's the only one that almost always issues paper at 24 months. And it's absolutely no way you can take the best combined cycle gas five power plant in the world and do it in eight years. You can't do it. It can't be done. You need minimum 12 maybe 15 years extension. So if somebody comes in and fixes that market failure and it doesn't require a lot of money. In other words for example gives what's called a partial credit guarantee to extend the financing from eight years to 12. The project is financed like that. And that is what the Green Climate Fund has the capacity to do if it's allowed to do its work by its board by the global community and all that kind of. It is it can be done by the way the kinds of things I'm talking about have been done. There is a gas combined cycle gas five power plant called really it was done by fixing the market failure. The project was done and it's been producing electric power from an offshore gas field now for about 12 years. This can be done. Market failures can be fixed. There is a role for the Green Climate Fund to do it. But and I believe that this is the way to get the private sector the the market if you like to function more effectively than it is doing in an emerging economies. That's my take on that. An economist myself an earlier part of my life. I want to go back to the market failure maybe because the original market failure that keeps us from solving this problem on the market is lack of a carbon price by James in the beginning. Right. So if we are dealing with there's there's efforts in a number of developed countries to either have a mission trading system such as Union or Canada is implementing one now is talking to us about a carbon tax that would put a price on carbon. When you have a system like that the market is allowed to work. The market is then able to differentiate between different sources of energy and dependent on their on their real cost. The issue at the moment is if I'm building a coal fire power plant at the moment I'm not paying cost of coal. I'm paying a fraction of the cost of coal. Most of the cost is external and is borne by other people. It's borne by people suffering from climate change is borne by people suffering from asthma attacks etc. It's not being borne by the person that builds the coal plant in that in the beginning. So that's the the market failure we're dealing with in the beginning. And then this international climate aid is one of the instances where we're able to trying at least to compensate that market failure by by an institutional arrangement. The institutional arrangement is that especially in countries that wouldn't be able to deal with the global price for carbon. Balkan countries are not going to work with the same carbon price that we're working with in the developed world. This is a way to influence their decision making in a way that's beneficial for the global community. Because if their decision is I can build a coal fire power plant with no assistance or I can spend the money on solar panels that might be significantly more expensive. But I get paid for that and that's a decision making we're able to influence and we're able to alleviate that that market failure was there in the beginning. I think you raise a very very important point about the market's role in all of this and the importance of the Green Climate Fund and other international institutions to let the markets fully operate in the most efficient way. But I will point out that it's markets always have some kind of governmental influence. And the reason we have so much solar installed in the U.S. is because of solar city and a lot of other solar installers. But it's because of the investment tax credit and so much solar has been installed in Germany and Europe because of the feed-in tariff. Those expenditures of taxpayer dollars in the call tax expenditures the tax credits or the feed-in tariffs created the market for solar and drove down the cost of solar. If the U.S. and Europe hadn't created this incentive in the market to do solar outside of market forces the price of solar panels would be much more expensive today than they are. So I respect the importance of letting markets play out in these circumstances but it's also important to understand that governments can have an important role in shaping markets to achieve national objectives. And that is the last word and I want to say thank you very very much to our panel. Thank you for helping us learn much more about all of this and your very very thoughtful presentations. We really really appreciate it and thank you all very much for coming.