Meeting climate mitigation and adaptation objectives require pipelines of many thousand low-carbon urban infrastructure projects throughout the world. Public finance on its own will be insufficient. Development banks and the private sector recognize the magnitude of the challenge; thus, many are increasing funding to drive forward the Paris Agreement goals. However, one threat to attracting sufficient funding is that there is a gap in the ambitions of financial institutions to invest in the most impactful projects and the ability of the city’s most vulnerable to climate change to attract available funding. Cities often lack the capacity to develop a robust proof of concept that shows these projects will not only mitigate the effects of climate change and build the climate resilience but will also deliver a return on investment.
The Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM) is uniquely positioned to bridge this gap by helping cities to mature pipelines of projects from concept to a stage where they can be advanced towards full feasibility analysis and ultimately investment. Together with the Governments of Germany and Luxembourg, GCoM announced City Climate Finance Gap Fund that will significantly increase the pipeline of high-quality bankable climate friendly urban infrastructure projects that must be progressed to meet the urgency of the climate crisis.
In recognition of upcoming Gap Fund opportunity, IUC Asia is assisting Hang Tuah Jaya to develop the initial concept note. As a next step, the concept note will be replenished according to the Gap Fund criteria and IUC Asia will assist in the submission to the Gap Fund.
Tackling climate change is a priority for Hang Tuah Jaya, which has set ambitious short and long-term emissions reduction targets, i.e. to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions by 45% intensity carbon by 2030. According to 2018 GHG inventory, the electricity consumption contributes the largest GHG emissions and followed by transportation sector.
The virtual meeting among Hang Tuah Jaya stakeholders, IUC Asia team and UTM took place on 08 May 2020. The meeting aimed to pre-liminary identify the several promising mitigation climate change projects that would be developed in Hang Tuah Jaya’s concept note. The project candidates have included low carbon transport and energy efficiency. Those are related to the large numbers of carbon emission generation according to 2018 inventory report. Technical input were provided by UTM and IUC Asia to broaden both the depth and width of projects. The two important criteria, namely capacity of emission reduction and blending climate funds, also need to be considered in project selection. Blended finance leverages given financial resources, which may be dedicated to achieving project bankability.
