Staff Climate Notes
2024
December 9, 2024
Fintech Applications for Boosting Climate Finance
Description: Climate fintech—the intersection between climate change, financial services, and digital technologies—is playing an important role in attracting more investment into climate finance by leveraging innovative technologies, thereby addressing some financing barriers. While recognizing that technology alone can only be a partial solution, the note outlines how fintech can help address financing challenges for climate investments. It also details the beneficial features of emerging financial technologies in climate finance and explores the limitations of fintech tools. In addition, the note emphasizes private sector efforts in this area, drawing on discussions with market participants, private sector, and regulatory bodies. Finally, it elicits several lessons learned and discusses potential policy implications, focusing on improving quality and accessibility of climate data, developing digital infrastructure, improving the availability of financing and the liquidity of financial instruments for climate investments, and ensuring appropriate environmental and financial regulation. Even though technology offers considerable promise for supporting climate finance, it can only partially alleviate certain barriers while carrying risks that will need to be carefully managed. Fintech should be an integral part of the overall policy solution to help address challenges in scaling up climate finance.
November 19, 2024
Unlocking Adaptation Finance in Emerging Market and Developing Economies
Description: Mitigation and decarbonization efforts are falling short of the 1.5°C goal, making adaptation critical. Developing economies are affected the most, despite having contributed the least to the problem. Nearly 98 percent of adaptation finance comes from public actors, with highly fragmented flows from the private sector. As financing needs increase, bringing private sector finance becomes critical and requires reframing adaptation investments from being seen not just as a risk exposure but also as an investment opportunity. This requires addressing real and perceived investment barriers, public-private collaboration and risk sharing, as well as financial incentives and innovation to unlock scalable, inclusive solutions. Adaptation is more complex than mitigation, with challenges in defining, evaluating, pricing, and scaling investments. Progress on adaptation requires policy reforms, incentives, and partnerships between governments, businesses, and communities and public-private risk sharing.
October 10, 2024
Sleepwalking to the Cliff Edge?: A Wake-up Call for Global Climate Action
Description: Urgent action to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is needed now. Early next year, all countries will set new emissions targets for 2035 while revising their 2030 targets. Global GHGs must be cut by 25 and 50 percent below 2019 levels by 2030 to limit global warming to 2°C and 1.5°C respectively. But current targets would only cut emissions by 12 percent, meaning global ambition needs to be doubled to quadrupled. Further delay will lead to an ‘emissions cliff edge’, implying implausible cuts in GHGs and putting put 1.5°C beyond reach. This Note provides IMF staff’s annual assessment of global climate mitigation policy. It illustrates options for equitably aligning country targets with the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals. It also provides guidance on modelling needed to set emissions targets and quantify climate mitigation policy impacts.
October 9, 2024
Harnessing Renewables in Sub-Saharan Africa: Barriers, Reforms, and Economic Prospects
Description: Sub-Saharan Africa needs to significantly accelerate its electricity generation. While hydropower is prominent in some countries, solar and wind power generation has lagged other world regions, even though sub-Saharan Africa has some of the most favorable conditions. A mix of domestic and external financing can increase both renewable electricity generation and GDP. In a scenario where about $25 bn in climate finance flows are allocated annually to renewable energy, renewable electricity production could be up to 24 percent higher than in a scenario excluding this financing, and annual GDP growth would be boosted by 0.8 percentage point on average over the next decade, accompanied by stronger labor demand in the electricity sector. Policies can help catalyze climate finance. An ambitious package of governance, business regulations, and external sector reforms is associated with a 20 percent increase in climate finance flows and a 7 percent increase in electricity generation over five years. In addition, implementing climate policies is linked to increases in green foreign direct investment announcements and green electricity production.
October 8, 2024
Policies to Foster Green FDI: Best Practices for Emerging Market and Developing Economies
Description: Meeting COP28 goals requires a substantial increase in clean energy investment by 2030, including in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). Amid domestic financial constraints, foreign direct investment (FDI) could play a key role in EMDEs’ ability to close their renewable energy investment gap and finance green projects, more broadly. This Note finds that strengthening climate policies boosts FDI into renewable energy in EMDEs, especially in those with solar power potential, while less clear effects are found for FDI into EVs and green hydrogen possibly due to their recent emergence. Closing the average climate policy gap with respect to AEs could secure 40 percent of the private finance needed for renewable energy investment in EMDEs, helping overcome the impact of high financing costs. Strengthening the macro-structural framework, such as through improving trade and capital account openness and institutional quality, would also raise green FDI inflows, complementing climate policies. Case studies show that countries that attracted FDI into renewable energy put in place a large and diverse set of policies in the electricity sector, including those that secure a revenue stream for investors in the initial phases, such as power-purchase agreements/feed-in tariffs, renewables targets, and complementary investments. Countries that successfully attracted FDI into EVs relied on the development of national sectoral strategies including production and adoption subsidies, prior comparative advantage in the sector, and bilateral alliances with key players in the EV market. Finally, comprehensive national hydrogen strategies that leverage international efforts to boost production, and good conditions for production of renewable energy, were key drivers of green hydrogen FDI. Global initiatives such as the Just Energy Transition Partnerships and the EU strategy for green hydrogen are benefitting FDI to EMDEs.
October 4, 2024
Destination Net Zero: The Urgent Need for a Global Carbon Tax on Aviation and Shipping
Description: The need to decarbonize international aviation and maritime has long been overlooked. The two sectors account for a small but rapidly growing share of global CO2 emissions, and could rise to as much as 15 to 40 percent by 2040. Pricing these emissions could help global climate policy in two ways. First, it could accelerate technological development while incentivizing efficiency, kick-starting the sectors’ transition to net zero while addressing the sectors’ hitherto favorable tax treatment. Second, pricing could raise up to $200 billion a year in revenues by 2035, which could be allocated to climate finance or other uses. There are significant political obstacles, however, notably reaching consensus on revenue allocation and managing price impacts, which are substantive for flight tickets but less so for shipped goods. Pricing variants, like ‘fee and rebate’ schemes (feebates), have lower price impacts but raise fewer revenues. This paper discusses these policies, using a new model to quantify impacts on fuel use, emissions, revenues, production and economic costs, and on vulnerable states..
October 3, 2024
Embedded in Nature: Nature-Related Economic and Financial Risks and Policy Considerations
Description: The economy is embedded in, and dependent on, nature. Yet economic activity is degrading nature at an unprecedented pace. Interacting with climate change, nature loss and transformation generates significant threats to the global economy and financial system. However, work on the implications of nature-related risks for macroeconomic and financial sector policies remains at an early stage. This note seeks to contribute to this emerging policy space in three main ways: (i) it proposes a conceptual framework for understanding nature-related risks by mapping out macroeconomic transmission channels, emphasizing their impact on the economy and financial systems through “double materiality;” (ii) it conducts empirical analysis, finding that nearly 38 percent of bank loans of the 100 largest global banks are to harmful subsidies-dependent sectors and 44 percent are exposed to conservation areas under the Global Biodiversity Framework, and that industries most exposed to nature degradation are not well prepared to manage these risks; and (iii) it discusses takeaways for macroeconomic and financial sector policies and frameworks.
March 27, 2024
Key Challenges Faced by Fossil Fuel Exporters during the Energy Transition
Description: The global energy transition is affecting fossil fuel exporters from multiple angles. It is adding to longstanding uncertainties on relative movements of fossil fuel demand and supply—which impact fossil fuel-related exports, fiscal flows, investment and subsequently external and fiscal accounts, economic growth, and employment. While policymakers are very familiar with these challenges, they now also face expectations of a permanent decline in the long-run global demand for fossil fuels. Key factors that could determine country-level impacts include (i) the type of fossil fuel a country exports (ii) extraction costs and (iii) country characteristics. The monitoring and mitigation of fiscal risks will need to be stepped up. Fiscal policy also has a role in reducing domestic emissions, encouraging adoption of low-carbon technologies, and helping those most vulnerable to changes from the transition. Broader macroeconomic risks can be reduced by accelerating ongoing structural reforms that support alternative engines of growth. Low- or zero-carbon emission energy industries could offer new avenues that build on existing fossil fuel knowledge and infrastructure. Concurrently, improved financial regulation and supervision could reduce financial sector exposures. Finally, international coordination on the design and implementation of climate policy as well as international transfer schemes (financing and capacity development) could reduce uncertainties surrounding the transition path and associated adverse economic consequences.
2023
November 28, 2023
Energy Transition and Geoeconomic Fragmentation: Implications for Climate Scenario Design
Description: The transition to a low-carbon economy, which is needed to mitigate climate change and meet the Paris Agreement temperature goals, has been affected by the supply chain and energy supply disruptions that originated during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the subsequent energy crisis and exacerbation of geopolitical tensions. These developments, and the broader context of the ongoing “polycrisis,” can affect future decarbonization scenarios. This reflects three main factors: (1) pullbacks in climate mitigation policies and increased carbon lock-in in fossil fuel infrastructure and policymaking; (2) the decreasing likelihood of continuous cost reduction in renewable energy technologies; and (3) the likely intensification of macroeconomic shocks amid increasing geoeconomic fragmentation, and the associated policy responses. In this context, the note assesses the implications of the polycrisis for hypothetical scenarios used to assess climate-related financial risks. Following an analysis of the channels through which these effects are likely to materialize over short- and long-term horizons and some policy implications, the note proposes potential adjustments to the design of the climate scenarios used by financial institutions, central banks, and financial sector supervisors and regulators within their risk management frameworks.
November 21, 2023
Is the Paris Agreement Working? A Stocktake of Global Climate Mitigation
Description: Urgent and aggressive action to cut greenhouse gas emissions this decade is needed. As countries take stock of the Paris Agreement, this Note provides IMF staff’s annual assessment of global climate mitigation policy. Global ambition needs to be more than quadrupled: emissions cuts of 50 percent below 2019 levels by 2030 are needed for 1.5 degrees Celsius, but current targets would only achieve 11 percent. We provide options for ratcheting-up ambition equitably. Implementation could be accelerated via agreements on minimum carbon prices. Drastic increases in mitigation investment are needed, requiring policies to shift private sector incentives. Climate finance should be scaled-up, with a new goal aligned with needs in developing countries. The development and diffusion of low-carbon technologies should be accelerated collaboratively. Overall, the Paris Agreement is making progress, but a response to the Global Stocktake that prioritizes decisive action this decade is critical.