Publications

In France, the investments for the climate that will have to be made between now and 2030 to meet the objective are considerable. And since this target will have to be increased to contribute to the new European objective, the need for investment will also increase. Today, the State and public authorities are actively involved in climate-friendly investments. What will happen in the future? Who will pay, who will go into debt: the State, local authorities, taxpayers, households, companies or future generations?

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.

The French National Low-Carbon Strategy (SNBC) aims at doubling the volume of CO2 removals thanks to the contribution of the forest-based sector, the agricultural sector and the geological carbon capture and storage technologies. The projections concerning these compartments and the underlying technical assumptions have been explored and compared to the existing literature in an in-depth analysis, with the goal of clarifying the challenges and conditions for this massive increase in carbon removals. The conclusions are that far-reaching changes are required in the different sectors and that some objectives for the forest-based sector may be impossible to achieve.

In order to reach the objectives of the recently approved EU Climate Law, the agricultural sector has to simultaneously reduce significantly its level of emission, increase the amount of carbon it sequesters, and augment the production of biomass in substitution of fossil fuel – which are to be phased out in the short term. In […]

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.

A steep rise in investment in low-carbon vehicles and sustained climate investment in other sectors, a fall in the financing of fossil fuels, a climate funding deficit of over 13 billion that recovery measures are unlikely to offset...

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.

In order to understand what public financial institutions can do, I4CE and Ramboll have analyzed 5 territorial projects, from the Vosges to the Dordogne, which are trying to meet the challenge of adaptation. Beyond their differences, each of the cases studied shows that adaptation requires, above all, dedicating time and resources to change the way projects are designed and carried out.

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.

In the context of the development of the Low Carbon Label, one of the recurring questions from potential financiers is: "What am I allowed to say and do when financing certified low carbon projects? With this publication, I4CE provides operational and pragmatic answers.

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.

Explicit carbon pricing systems - a tax or a carbon market - continue to develop around the world. In the 2021 edition of its Global Carbon Accounts, I4CE presents the main trends and provides an overview of these public policies ...

Eating less animal products and wasting less reduces the budget, but increasing consumption of organic products increases it. In total, does adopting a sustainable diet increase or decrease consumer spending?

To learn more about the methodology used by I4CE to assess the contribution of financing flows to the emergence of a sustainable food system, this technical paper introduces it and identifies its limitations and key methodological challenges for the future.

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…

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.

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.

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.