Case study

Carbon Market Finance (CMF)

How the International Climate Fund (ICF) is supporting greenhouse gas mitigation and renewable energy generation in low income countries.

CMF has been developed jointly by the Department of Energy & Climate Change and the Department for International Development and in total the UK is contributing £50 million over 2013 to 2025 to build capacity and develop tools and methodologies that will help least developed countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, to access finance from the carbon market.

The UK will provide £49 million to the World Bank’s Carbon Initiative for Development (Ci-Dev) to deliver CMF. Ci-Dev will invest in low carbon technologies that deliver community and household level benefits, particularly focused on improving poor peoples’ access to clean energy. By successfully demonstrating the ability of carbon finance to deliver low carbon development in least developed countries Ci-Dev hopes to increase future carbon finance flows to these countries.

A further £1 million will be used to monitor and evaluate these impacts and capture and disseminate this knowledge. CMF aims to achieve significant development impacts, installing upwards of 165MW of new renewable energy generation, avoiding an estimated 2.6 MtCO2e, and mobilizing £982 million of private sector finance into clean technologies.

Published 22 November 2013