The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is the world’s largest dedicated fund helping developing countries respond to climate change. It was set up by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2010. The GCF’s Initial Resource Mobilisation (IRM) in 2014 raised $10.3 billion in pledges. In December 2019 GCF concluded the first replenishment process with an additional $9.9 billion in pledges (as of August 2020). The GCF’s second replenishment has reached a record funding level: as of December 2023, 31 countries pledged support to the Green Climate Fund with a total of USD 12.8 billion over the next four years. Six new pledges totaling USD 3.5 billion were announced at COP28 and build on momentum from GCF’s High-level Pledging Conference in Bonn in October 2023, where 25 countries pledged their support to GCF totaling USD 9.3 billion.
IFC signed the Accreditation Master Agreement (AMA) with GCF on November 22, 2017, which means that IFC can seek GCF funding for programs and projects for blending for its investment operations.
Priority Areas
The GCF's strategic plan for 2024-2027 articulates how GCF will significantly enhance its support to developing countries, improve access, and strive to deliver the highest levels of catalytic impact through its key assets – financial resources, partnerships, convening power, people and knowledge. Key areas of the plan include:
• Strengthened focus on how GCF will help developing countries translate their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Long-term Climate Strategies (LTS) into climate investments and programming;
• Clearer positioning of GCF’s value-add in the wider climate finance architecture, as both a climate capacity-builder and risk-inclined financier; and
• Core operational commitment to significantly improving access for developing countries to GCF finance.
Partnership with GCF can enable IFC to develop transformative projects that can deliver climate impact, blending concessional funds to leverage significantly larger private sector resources to scale up climate-smart investments.
First GCF and IFC collaboration
IFC’s first project was approved by the GCF Board in October 2023, up to $40 million in blended concessional financing and $1 million of technical assistance to support IFC's proposed investment in RenewStable Barbados, a 50 MW solar generation facility with green hydrogen and lithium-ion battery storage that will provide clean and stable electricity to the Barbadian grid (more details in disclosure below).
RenewStable Barbados will represent the first time GCF is supporting an IFC investment through the provision of concessional financing and the first green hydrogen project for IFC. The project is expected to have a significant impact on GHG emissions mitigation (avoiding 693,000 tCO2 emissions over the lifetime of the project) while reducing the country's dependence on expensive fuel imports.
