22.7 C
Yaoundé
Friday, March 29, 2024

Grant Opportunities: City Climate Finance Gap Fund

Must read

Deadline: Ongoing Opportunity

The City Climate Finance Gap Fund is now open for applications to support cities with early-stage technical assistance for low carbon and climate resilient urbanization plans and projects.

The Gap Fund aims to support proposals with a sizeable climate mitigation and/or adaptation impact or that can be considered as pilots or proofs of concept that, if successful, can be easily replicated in other geographic areas or ‘scaled up’. As each proposal is different, there is no minimum size for an application to be considered. However, the potential to deliver significant climate benefits is an essential selection criterion during the detailed assessment phase.

Goals
  • Provide technical assistance and capacity building for low carbon, resilient urbanization.
  • Build a high-quality urban investment pipeline for laterstage technical assistance.
  • Share knowledge on project preparation with developers and financiers.
The Gap Fund can:
  • Provide city planners with upstream technical assistance and tailor-made tools to enhance cities’ low-carbon planning and resilience efforts to address urban sprawling growth;
  • Help city leaders build a pipeline of high-quality, climate-smart urban investments, with a focus on early and often underfunded stages of project preparation.
  • Facilitate the connection between cities and prospective financing partners, such as World Bank or EIB lending, or third-party financiers.
  • Leverage international collaboration and partnerships with the Global Covenant of Mayors and city networks to learn from each other and standardize approaches.
Types of Proposals are Eligible
  • The Gap Fund provides technical assistance for upstream and early-stage concept development for low-carbon and climate-resilient urban planning and projects that align with the Paris Agreement objectives. Proposals therefore must have an urban focus and the potential to make a significant impact on climate change mitigation and/or adaptation.
  • Sectors include, nature based solution and green areas, urban mobility, energy efficiency and small renewables including in new or retrofit buildings, street lighting, district cooling and heating, solid waste and wastewater, circular economy and eco-district approaches including for slum upgrades. Please refer to the eligibility criteria.
Activities
  • The Gap Fund will finance
  • The following activities:
    • Supporting city climate strategy development and the generation of in-depth analytics to assess the climate action and resilience potential of plans, strategies, and investment programs
    • Providing capacity building for low- carbon capacity and climate-resilient urban development
    • Supporting the prioritization of investments as part of a climate strategy or investment program
    • Defining project concept definitions and the components of pre-feasibility studies
    • Supporting a strengthened approach to project financing
    • Matchmaking with additional support sources for later stages of project preparation
    • Offering potential support to fill in other project preparation gaps.
Eligibility Criteria
  • The City Climate Finance Gap Fund (or “Gap Fund”) aims to help cities in low- and middle-income countries transition towards low-carbon and climate-resilient pathways in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
  • To be eligible for Gap Fund support, all of the following criteria must be met:
    • Eligible countries: The Expression of Interest must come from developing and emerging countries identified in the ODA-OECD DAC list
    • Climate action potential: The Expression of Interest must aim to make an ambitious contribution to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions to meet the 1.5˚ Celsius goal identified in the Paris Agreement and/or adaptation to climate change.
    • Applicants must commit to carrying out an estimation of the proposal’s climate change mitigation or adaptation potential or working with Gap Fund experts to estimate it.
    • Applicant/Ownership: The applicant must be a city or local government official or a third party that submits the proposal officially on behalf of the city or local government.
    • Urban dimension: The project must be situated in an urban area or functionally linked to one. Proposals presented by public or private developers with clear linkages to sub-national governments will be eligible, so long as a proposal’s urban dimension is clear and local political ownership is verified.
    • Stage: Gap Fund activities can provide support to cities either in strategic planning or up to the pre-feasibility stages of a project, namely:
      • Climate strategy development/enabling environment
      • Project definition/concept
      • Pre-feasibility.

For more information, visit https://www.citygapfund.org/what-we-offer

- Advertisement -spot_img

More articles

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

- Advertisement -spot_img

Latest article