Publications

2025 is a pivotal year for the interlocking global agendas of climate and sustainable development, highlighted by major convenings such as the 5th Finance in Common Summit (FiCS), the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), the G20 Summit under South Africa’s presidency, and the UNFCCC COP30. Public development banks (PDBs) will feature prominently across these events, given their integral role in implementing these critical agendas through financial support and stakeholder mobilization.

Options for Public Development Banks. Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, several public development banks (PDBs) have responded with structured approaches to align their operations with the Agreement’s expectations (as described in Section 1). However, many PDBs, particularly those in emerging markets and developing economies, are yet to adopt an approach to align with the Paris Agreement (i.e., Paris alignment). As entities whose investment mandates are established by the Parties to the Paris Agreement (i.e., national governments), PDBs have specific obligations derived directly from these Parties’ commitments to act across all policy and regulatory frameworks under their jurisdictions, including for state-owned or state-mandated institutions and agencies. Accordingly, PDBs are expected to operate in a manner that supports the achievement of the Paris goals. More specifically, they are obligated to integrate their activities within the Agreement’s implementation mechanism by providing financial, technical, and capacity building support that is entirely consistent with national low-emission climate-resilient development pathways.

At the Spring Meetings, during an event with senior climate representatives from Multilateral Development Banks, I4CE, E3G, Germanwatch and NewClimate Institute officially launched a common position paper on what ambitous Paris alignment means for public development banks. This paper summarises years of research on Paris alignment to shed light on best practice and hopefully support decision makers in taking and implementing credible climate commitments. 

Public development banks have the potential to facilitate the transition from coal to renewable alternatives in developing and emerging countries by fostering conditions conducive to the early retirement and repurposing of coal plants. Co-written with NewClimate Institute, this report highlights the challenges associated with the early retirement of coal plants and examines public development banks' role in collaborating with national governments and power producers to support coal phase-out. 

With their historical role in funding coal capacity and public mandate, public development banks have a crucial role in enabling coal phase-out. Co-written with NewClimate Institute, this short paper explores many of the risks associated with proposals for abatement technologies and carbon credits as an input to current discussions on early coal retirement. 

This report co-written with NewClimate provides practical guidance for international financial institutions to support financial institutions’ alignment with the Paris Agreement goals, and to more broadly contribute to transforming local financial systems. This guidance is developed around three pillars: a harmonised alignment assessment; the alignment of financial intermediaries; and the alignment of financial systems at the national level.

This I4CE report focuses on the role of countries’ Long-Term Strategies (LTSs) in the Paris alignment approaches of Development Finance Institutions (DFIs). It explores the possible roles of both the LTS development process and the resulting LTS document in providing insights on the Paris alignment of investments within investment decision-making processes. The findings are relevant for a broader range of financial institutions.

The restructuring of the economy towards a low-carbon system will lead to develop activities that are aligned with the needs of a net zero economy, to restructure others in order to make them compatible with these needs and to stop harmful activities. The financial sector needs to anticipate these dynamics to address strategic risks and […]

In this study, I4CE reviews the characteristics and areas of intervention of public financial institutions, which make them essential actors for adaptation. The study also reviews all of the Public Financial Institutions' business lines to determine their levers for action.

This study takes stock on the experience of some twenty countries and several international development institutions in Environmental Budget Tagging. It identifies the expected benefits and the conditions to achieve them : take into account the measures that are unfavorable to the environment, consider the outcomes of assessed measures and not only their intention, repeat the exercise over time and fit it into the existing administrative culture and processes…

As the main financier of the French and European economies, banks play a key role in financing the transition. Their current contribution in France is in the order of 8 billion euros per year, but this will need to more than double according to estimates by I4CE. To accelerate this shift for banking institutions and to prevent their increasing exposures to climate risks, the debate has tended to revolve around whether or not there is a need to reform prudential requirements.

In 2017, the International Development Finance Club (IDFC) together with the group of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) made a joint commitment to “align financial flows with the Paris Agreement”. Since its commitment, the IDFC had focused its efforts on identifying what alignment means and implies.

In 2015, France pioneered requirements for climate-related disclosure from financial institutions, asking them to explain their strategy for integrating climate-related risks and for contributing to the achievement of the Paris Agreement objectives and the French national low-carbon strategy. Three years of implementation yielded mixed results and requirements are in the course of being updated in […]

While the financial consequences of climate impacts are already materializing, the regulators are implementing their agenda of actions to stimulate financial institutions into analyzing and managing their exposure to “physical climate risks”, and disclosing how they do so as recommended by the TCFD. How can financial actors make quick and efficient progress on analyzing and […]

Climate Action and Sustainable Development are two parts of the same challenge and must be addressed together. Both adopted in 2015, the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development frame a set of global objectives that are deeply connected.

  It therefore brings risks and opportunities for economic actors, which they must anticipate in order to optimise their strategy in a context of uncertainty. Against this backdrop, the use of scenarios – which are plausible representations of uncertain future states – is very useful in order to better understand the medium- and long-term challenges […]

It is no easy task to take climate risks – transition risks and physical risks – into account in financial management practices. As this note shows from the example of banking activities, the intrinsic characteristics of these risks – which are long-term and cannot be assigned a probability and for which there are no historical […]

Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, financial institutions and other economic actors have taken commitments to ‘align’ their activities with the goals agreed to by national governments in 2015. A growing body of literature from both the research community and practitioners has emerged on ‘alignment’ with the Paris Agreement goals – but to date […]

Recent bankruptcy of Californian utility PG&E reckons that companies and their financial stakeholders are already exposed to the potential physical impacts of climate change, also called “physical climate risks”. While risk is at the heart of financial institutions decision-making, only a few of them disclose how their portfolios – with potential PG&Es – are exposed […]

Financial institutions are already exposed to the potential physical impacts of climate change also called “physical climate risks” in finance. These require immediate attention from financial institutions, in order to understand how well prepared are the economic actors that they finance.   Yet financial institutions still lack tailored information to analyze their exposure to these […]