Below the press release from our partners South Pole and investors Climate KiC:
The City Finance Lab selects two promising innovative financing solutions for urban climate mitigation & adaptation
Zurich, Switzerland, 19 May, 2021 – In 2021, the City Finance Lab will support the development of two innovative financing solutions to prepare their launch across Europe, serving to unlock climate finance and scale-up urban climate ambition.
Resulting from EIT Climate-KIC and South Pole's City Finance Lab's (CFL) third call for proposals, two selected solutions will receive tailored technical advisory from the CFL's pool of technical advisors throughout 2021 to support their development and implementation. Both solutions cover crucial topics to help cities across their climate journeys.
Solution 1 — Environmental monitoring and monetisation of urban emission reductions by Everimpact
Cities are ramping up their climate mitigation ambitions. However, they often struggle to measure and properly value the impact of particular sustainable projects. To overcome this barrier, Everimpact is building an innovative emission monitoring software that helps city councils track, reduce, and monetise their air pollution data in order to unlock and leverage alternative financing sources targeted at cities.
Solution 2 — Sustainable repurposing of credit methods by SAS CreditSpectrum
Access to low-cost capital is a key barrier for cities across the world to accelerate their climate transition. SAS CreditSpectrum seeks to reward climate champions with the development of a first of its kind tool for cities: a credit rating methodology encompassing key mitigation and resilience metrics and matching universally understood investor language, enabling proactive cities to better raise the capital necessary to strengthen their climate ambitions.
These initiatives were voted on and selected by the CFL's Selection Committee – a council of municipal finance experts made up of the following members:
Joyce Coffee - Climate Resilience Consulting;
Matthew Jordan-Tank - European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD);
Lars M Andersson - Agence France Locale & FMDV;
James Dunham - Atkins;
Thomas Osdoba - EIT Climate-KIC
The CFL committee chose these solutions due to their strong public and private climate finance mobilisation potential, their state-of-the-art innovation, and ability to be scaled and replicated across other cities and regions. Both solutions show promise in aiding cities to raise capital to implement sustainable projects and helping them unlock additional finance to develop new green infrastructure, which in turn will allow cities to further raise their climate ambition.
Since its launch in 2018, the CFL has already supported ten innovative, replicable, and scalable financing solutions that will drive investments into climate-resilient, low-carbon, and green urban projects for sustainable cities in Europe, while also stimulating the replication of the supported initiatives through knowledge sharing and capacity building. Within these three years, the CFL helped the City of Lisbon develop its first Green Participatory Budget (PB) and pledge to mobilise up to EUR 5 million for the development of sustainable infrastructure identified by citizens, and a parallel green school PB. In addition, the CFL supported the city of La Rochelle on the development of a Carbon Aggregator, a project that will gather private funders to develop local sustainable projects. In 2020, the city announced its official launch.
Other examples include supporting Poland's National Energy Conservation Agency (NAPE) in the creation of an online tool to support cities identify appropriate retrofitting measures and establish energy performance contracting (ESCO) schemes, and NAPE's release of their ESCO for municipalities tool with a pilot project underway in Lubań.
The support of initiatives such as the City Finance Lab has the potential to catalyze climate action for all people in urban centres. "The City Finance Lab is a platform for testing and implementing innovative financing solutions with the support of targeted experts. However, its true impact lies in the replication potential of the solutions that it supports – which multiplies its potential impact substantially." says Thomas Osdoba, Senior Advisor EIT Climate-KIC and CFL Selection Committee Member.
About the City Finance Lab: The City Finance Lab – a joint initiative of South Pole and EIT Climate-KIC – is a platform supporting the development of innovative, replicable, and scalable financing solutions that drive investment into climate-resilient, low-carbon and green urban projects for sustainable cities. Learn more on the website: www.cityfinancelab.com. Read about the 2019 winners here.
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