Publications

The Basel Committee is finally taking up climate issues! Founded in 1974, this forum which brings together the financial supervisors of the G20 countries and which provides the main guidelines for guaranteeing financial stability has been absent from climate issues since Donald Trump's mandate. It recently published a first consultative document on the principles of climate risk management and supervision. Julie Evain presents the recommendations addressed by I4CE to the Basel Committee.

On December 15, 2021, as part of its communication on carbon sinks, the European Commission made public its proposals to strengthen carbon storage in agricultural soils. Its objective: to remunerate farmers to encourage them to store more carbon. To achieve this, it is first necessary to build a European carbon certification framework to guarantee the […]

Number of climate public policies have social impacts, and conversely. To foster the consideration of these joint climate and social effects in the development of public policies, actors are calling to turn the increasingly popular climate budget tagging exercises into climate AND social budget tagging exercises. Is it a good idea? Chloé Boutron and Solène Metayer, who attempted the exercise, are sharing their insights.

COP26 in Glasgow did not disappoint in terms of the volume of announcements from the financial sector. But what is behind the hype? While buried in an avalanche of ‘pretty words’, there was notable progress by financial institutions. They now look at the ‘alignment’ not just of what – but also of who – is financed.

The French government has just published the environmental budget assessment, or ‘Green Budget’ of its 2022 draft budget. Morgane Nicol of I4CE and Michel Colombier of IDDRI offer insights into these exercises, which are becoming more popular in many countries and local authorities. They highlight that the environmental budget assessment does not dispense with an Ecological Transition Strategy. Instead, […]

Expectations ahead of COP 26 in Glasgow regarding the contributions of the finance sector are high. Anuschka Hilke from [i4ce] explains that our expectations, however, may not currently be high enough. An impactful contribution to achieving climate goals will require the financial community to go beyond reducing their exposure to climate-related risks.

In this op-ed published in a French economic newspaper, Benoît Leguet, director of I4CE, considers that the French Government must plan over the long term the necessary financing for climate change mitigation and adaptation, by instituting a public finance programming law for climate. France has set itself climate objectives, it must clarify what means it will devote to them.

The IPCC scenarios are constantly cited when we are interested in climate and its evolution, but sometimes wrongly, and often without a clear understanding of what they imply. On the occasion of the release of the latest IPCC report, in which five new scenarios have appeared, Charlotte Vailles of  I4CE explains how they were constructed and what information is available about them. 

A core goal of the Paris Agreement is “make finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.” Since 2015, financial institutions of all types – from development banks to asset owners and pension funds – have committed to making their portfolios ‘consistent’ with the Paris Agreement. In practice, Financial Institutions are at times approaching alignment from different points of entry: either focusing on one hand “what” or on the other hand “who” is financed.

Today, all eyes are on the forthcoming 2021-2025 Climate Action Plan of the World Bank Group as a proxy for what the development finance community’s ambition for COP26 in Glasgow.The Climate Action Plans of Development Banks up until 2020 have been structured around climate finance commitments focusing on increasing their support for climate-specific activities. However, following up on their commitments to “Align with the Paris Agreement”, these institutions need to develop post 2020 strategies and actions plans, which go a step further to meet the level of ambition of the Paris Agreement objectives.

The government has recently modified the environmental, social and governance disclosure obligations for French investors via the publication of an implementing decree which specifies regulator expectations. Romain Hubert of the Institute for Climate Economics explains why this decree was to be expected and necessary for climate reporting.

Yesterday sees the release of the data on project financing from the nine major Multilateral Development Banks on the Energy Policy Tracker – of which I4CE is partner – and a new Big Shift Global briefing, showing that, since the beginning of the pandemic, the Banks provided at least $12 billion to clean energy and $3 billion for fossil fuels.

I4CE’s Board of Directors has appointed Jean Pisani-Ferry as Chair of the association. Jean Pisani-Ferry was previously Director of the European think tank Bruegel then France Stratégie, and his experience will enable the Institute to develop its capacity to inform the public policy debate. He succeeds Pierre Ducret, founder of I4CE, who has chaired the Institute since its creation, after developing climate economics research activities at Caisse des Dépôts then CDC Climat.

Some of the heat waves and wildfires that were experienced in Europe and in the world in the summer of 2019 are symptoms of a climate that is already changing. These events may cause losses for banks and other financial institutions, which will therefore have to integrate climate change into their decisions. Regulators are also pushing in this direction.

In this op-ed published in a French economic newspaper, Benoit Leguet, director of I4CE, considers that the French Government must plan over the long term the necessary financing for climate change mitigation and adaptation, by instituting a public finance programming law for climate. France has set itself climate objectives, it must clarify what means it will devote to them.

The public institutions that regulate and supervise private finance will talk a lot about climate change in the coming months. The European taxonomy that allows economic actors to identify activities that are favorable to ecological transition or the "climate stress tests" of the Banque de France and ACPR are just some of the issues they will have to deal with and that we invite you to follow. I4CE has synthesized for you the "climate calendar" of financial regulation in a graphics.

A few days after the publication of France's 2021 budget bill, and before any debates in parliament, the government released an environmental assessment of it. This assessment, often referred to as the "green budget", is an important step forward for the transparency of public action, according to Marion Fetet and Sébastien Postic from I4CE. Nevertheless, they suggest improvements to be made to the scope of the budget analyzed or to the classification of certain expenditures. And they call for making the green budget a real tool for greening the budget.

Few green budgeting initiatives have led to concrete reforms or revisions of priority investments. How can we move from simple theoretical exercises to concrete action for the environment? This is the question asked by Sébastien Postic of I4CE, Oskar Lecuyer of AFD and Jennifer Doherty-Bigara of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

2 billion euros: this is the amount that the French government will bet on hydrogen until 2022 as part of its recovery plan. An amount that will increase to reach 5.7 billion by 2030. I4CE invited researchers Jean-Pierre Ponssard from Polytechnique/CNRS and Guy Meunier from INRAE, both members of the Energy & Prosperity Chair, to analyze France's "hydrogen plan".

The French government has just officially unveiled the content of its €100 billion recovery plan, part of which is dedicated to the fight against climate change.