LeadIT Members help shape Climate Investment Fund’s Industry Decarbonization Programme.

In a consultation organised by the Climate Investment Fund (CIF) and LeadIT during the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, LeadIT members had the opportunity to provide feedback on CIF’s recently launched Industry Decarbonization Programme, intended to mobilize over $60 billion to support industry transition in developing countries. The feedback will be used to inform the final design of the fund. Representatives from multilateral development banks, United Nations, governments, industry actors and organizations participated in the consultation, including LeadIT Members Ethiopia, Germany, India, Japan, Sweden, Australia, and the UK.

Industry transition in developed economies has moved to implementation, but support is needed to replicate this shift in developing countries as they can have limited access to finance, technical expertise and capacity. Collaboration at the corporate, sectoral, and national levels is needed to achieve that. LeadIT has a well-established practice of public-private collaboration and knowledge sharing across sectors and countries and is well placed to contribute to shaping this shift.

In the past year, LeadIT’s Finance Working Group has been engaging with multilateral development banks and other international finance institutions, discussing and sharing knowledge on de-risking investments and mobilizing finance. In their last Summit Statement, LeadIT Members have collectively agreed to promote mandates that contribute to the de-risking of the transition of heavy industries in emerging and developing countries. We have also released a research paper and a policy brief on the role of international finance institutions in green transition, some of the key points of which were echoed by the participants, specifically regarding the need to increase the use of scrap in steelmaking and the importance of financing first movers.

Roadmaps can also actively support this work. As roadmapping has shifted from policy and technology alignment towards being more about  implementation, not only can it contribute to de-risking investment by signaling strong commitment to transition by governments and industries, but also pinpoint how much and what kind of finance is needed for specific projects and the policies needed to enable these projects. LeadIT is currently supporting national level roadmapping processes in South Africa and India and developing a methodology around roadmapping in the hard to abate industry sector together with our national partners.

To make sure no one is left behind in the race to net-zero, a model for de-risking and concessional loans for emerging economies is needed and this consultation is the first step towards delivering it. The work of LeadIT on finding financing mechanism and models of pooling resources to de-risk investments for green industrial transition will continue throughout 2023.