Author: The World Bank 

Category: Finance Facility

Published/Created by: The World Bank and others

Link: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/brief/city-climate-finance-gap-fund

The City Climate Finance Gap Fund supports cities with early-stage technical assistance for low carbon and climate resilient projects and urbanization plans. This Fund is an initiative of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM), along with other key partners in the urban and climate finance arena including C40 Cities, ICLEI, and the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (CCFLA). The Gap Fund is implemented by the World Bank (WB) and European Investment Bank (EIB), in partnership with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).

The Gap Fund provides this support at the very early stages of city planning or project preparation and covers a wide range of sectors, including energy efficiency, green buildings, sustainable cooling, nature-based solutions, local renewable energy, sustainable mobility, the circular economy and water/wastewater management. The Gap Fund also contributes cutting-edge knowledge, tools and recommendations. The Gap Fund is targeting at least 100 million Euros in overall funding – funding that can, in turn, leverage more than 4 billion Euros in investment for urban climate action.

The funding supports three main goals:

1. Provide technical assistance and capacity building;
2. Build a high-quality urban investment pipeline for later-stage technical assistance;
3. Share knowledge on project preparation with developers and financiers.

Till September 2021 the Gap Fund has approved technical assistance for 33 cities since its operational launch in September 2020, filling a critical gap in technical assistance funding to help cities turn their climate ambitions into finance-ready projects.

Some more case studies can be found here: https://www.citygapfund.org/story/city-climate-finance-gap-fund-completes-first-year-operation-support-33-cities 

Website: https://www.citygapfund.org/