The landscape of climate finance 2012
Climate finance has been a key topic in recent international climate negotiations. Understanding how much and what type of finance is available to advance low-carbon growth is critical to scaling up finance and ensuring that resources are used effectively. The Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2012 identifies global climate finance flows of USD 364 billion in 2011. The private sector provided the majority of finance, mostly from developed countries. The public sector acted as a catalyst for private investment by providing incentives and concessional loans, as well as bilateral aid to developing countries. Public and private intermediaries, especially national development banks and commercial banks, played an important role in channeling as well as raising climate finance. The majority of funding captured by the study relates to mitigation activities, mostly renewable energy generation projects and energy efficiency. Emerging economies such as China, Brazil, and India received one-third of global mitigation-directed climate finance flows; notably, most of these investments were raised domestically and invested in pursuit of development mandates.