Climate Finance

Climate is a strategic pillar for IFC and the World Bank Group. IFC is committed to growing its climate-related investments to an annual average of 35 percent of its own-account long-term commitment volume between 2021 and 2025 and working with financial institutions to finance projects that will support mitigation and adaptation.  

IFC is the largest development finance institution supporting the private sector in emerging markets, and our Climate Business work allows us to invest directly and partner with financial institutions in climate-smart sectors. We collaborate with governments, the private sector, financial institutions, and other development banks in an effort to increase climate-related investments.  

IFC partners with financial institutions to deploy capital, mostly in the form of loans to businesses and other organizations, to implement climate-friendly projects. Read about our comprehensive approach to Greener Banking & Transformation.  

There are well over $30 trillion dollars worth of climate-smart investment opportunities in emerging markets. Financial institutions will need to provide the majority of the capital for these opportunities, helping enable the transition to a low-carbon global economy. We estimate that financial institutions must grow the share of climate-friendly projects in their portfolios from an average of 7 percent in 2016 to 30 percent by 2030 to finance the greening of the economy. That equates to an increase from approximately $1.5 trillion to $13.4 trillion, a growth opportunity too big for banks to miss.  

As of May 2021, we have committed $9 billion from our own account to climate related projects and leveraged an additional $4.3 billion through 200+ emerging market financial institution partners. These investments support partners in avoiding GHG emissions of 15.9 million tons per year. In addition, IFC’s advisory services have facilitated our client financial institutions build climate finance portfolios of $28.7 billion, avoiding annual GHG emissions of 92.9 million tons. This is the equivalent of taking approximately 20 million cars off the road, or of erasing the annual fossil CO2 emissions of a country the size of Chile*.

*source: EDGAR – Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research