Publications

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.

An international consortium of 14  expert organisations, including I4CE, has launched the "Energy Policy Tracker" website to track Covid-19 recovery packages from a climate and energy perspective. Initial results show that until now, G20 countries have granted much more aid to fossil fuels than to clean energies. What about France? Louise Kessler, Director of I4CE's Economics Programme, looks back at the government policies already adopted in France as well as those that are still at the announcement stage.

Decisions taken in response to the COVID-19 crisis today will lock in the world’s development patterns for decades. With policy decisions made on a daily basis, information about how public money is being spent can be hard to follow. That is why a consortium of 14 expert organizations came together to track energy-specific responses by G20 governments.

To accelerate and deepen this work, the new European Commission will adopt a renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy.  As the public consultation to define the future directions of this strategy draws to a close, Julie Evain from I4CE points out three challenges to be met in order to integrate climate issues into the financial sector.

Ian Cochran and Alice Pauthier explain why even with COVID19, public financial institutions (PFIs) must continue their important work on aligning their activities with climate and sustainability goals – and how their progress may be key to ensuring that the response to the crisis is both just and green.

In spite of its "greening" during the previous programming period, the Common Agricultural Policy has had very little impact on greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector, even though they must be halved by 2050. And the CAP's two flagship instruments on environmental issues - green payments under the first pillar, and agri-environmental and climate measures (AECM) under the second - have come in for strong criticism.

The pandemic caused by Covid 19 has triggered a major economic crisis. The emergency treatment of this crisis relied heavily on massive recourse to fiscal and monetary instruments already widely used during the 2008 crisis. But financial regulation was also mobilized to ease or alleviate prudential constraints in order to preserve bank financing for economic players, especially those most affected by the crisis. This illustrates the different facets of the use of financial regulation: primarily intended to ensure the efficient functioning of financial markets and financial stability, it can also be used with economic policy objectives.

The current economic crisis has caused a drop in the price on the European carbon market (or EU ETS for European Union Emissions Trading System) and will contribute to the increase in the surplus of allowances. This highlights how necessary it is to reform the mechanism for managing this surplus or even to implement a floor price. However, for Charlotte Vailles from I4CE and Nicolas Berghmans from IDDRI, this crisis should lead us to consider the EU ETS no longer as the "cornerstone" of decarbonisation in Europe, but as a safety net.

A few months ago, the European Commission launched a consultation on the revision of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive. The issue at stake is to strengthen the obligation for 6,000 large companies to communicate publicly on how they deal with major societal issues, such as climate change and low-carbon transition. For Romain Hubert of I4CE, reporting must be strengthened in particular on the scenario analyses that companies conduct to identify the risks and opportunities of the transition. But what exactly should they communicate?