Publications

Ten years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, what progress has been made to make financial flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development (the ambition set out in Article 2.1(c) of the Agreement)? And what is needed going forward? Although we still lack a comprehensive assessment of progress, this article draws on existing analysis of what can help align financial flows and examines the efforts made by governments and the financial sector to this end. It highlights a development in the debate towards a country-driven approach and a focus on real investment needs. It explores ways to overcome existing barriers to action despite a challenging global context. The article advocates that Article 2.1(c) should be viewed not as a stand-alone provision, but as something that requires full implementation of all the provisions of the Paris Agreement. It also calls for a shift from a target-focused to an action-focused finance agenda and discusses how the COP30 in Belém can contribute to this.

Cette étude s’inscrit dans la continuité des travaux d’I4CE engagés depuis plusieurs années sur la qualification et la quantification des besoins et des moyens pour l’adaptation en France. Elle propose une vision d’ensemble de ce que l’on peut dire à date sur ces aspects, basée sur le suivi et l’analyse d’une quinzaine de domaines d’action publique concernés par le changement climatique. Alors que l'adaptation est souvent un grand oublié des PLF, ce rapport apporte des éléments sur l’effort consenti aujourd’hui, les besoins identifiés pour demain et les modalités de répartition des coûts.

One year ago, Mario Draghi warned that Europe was becalmed in treacherous waters. Fading competitiveness, trade disputes to east and west, and a growing political mutiny against the green transition make the way forward hard to navigate. This year, however, the EU has begun to find its bearings – guided by the Competitiveness Compass, with decarbonisation as the north star of the Clean Industrial Deal.

Europe is levelling up its industrial policy. From the Clean Industrial Deal to proposals for a more flexible EU budget, the Commission signals new ambition to build scale in strategic cleantech sectors and strengthen Europe’s decarbonising industrial base. Yet this firepower risks losing impact if spread too thinly. Limited resources demand sharper focus. As the Draghi Report made clear, Europe must act strategically: understand its industrial strengths and vulnerabilities, prioritise the sectors that matter most, and align funds, regulation, and institutional capacity accordingly. 

This year marks an important milestone for I4CE: we are celebrating a decade of commitment to the climate economics. We would like to thank our partners who agree to say a few words at the occasion of this anniversary.  

This year marks an important milestone for I4CE: we are celebrating our 10-year anniversary. Setting sails the year the Paris Agreement was adopted, our mission was clear from the outset: to promote effective, efficient and fair policies for the climate transition.  Since then, we have focused our economic analysis on public policies with an emphasis on assessing the investment needs and policy options for the transition. Our ambition has been to advance the public debate on climate with facts and figures, promoting long-term investment plans as an essential tool to turn political ambitions into reality. Over the years, we have applied this approach to a growing number of policy areas and expanded our geographical scope from France to Europe and internationally.

The next long term EU budget will take us through the 2030 goal posts, by when GHG emissions should be down by 55%. It will also lay the groundwork for investing in a climate-neutral future for the continent towards the yet-to-be agreed objectives for 2040. So, when the European Commission presented its proposal for a €2 trillion multiannual financial framework (MFF) just before the summer break, there was good reason to carefully study the details from the perspective of closing the EU’s climate investment deficit.  

Europe is making progress on the clean transition, but the pace is too slow across several parametres. ECNO’s analysis is structured around 13 building blocks of the transition, tracking changes in the six-year trend for nearly 150 indicators and also the expected impact of policies – a new addition to this year’s report. In the 2025 edition, we also analysed the changes through the lens of broader EU objectives, namely competitiveness, resilience, and citizens’ well-being. 

In July, Commission President von der Leyen announced a €2 trillion EU budget fit “for a new era,” set to launch for a seven-year period in 2028. As EU-watchers in Brussels and beyond scrambled to digest the reams of legislative proposals that followed this headline-grabbing announcement, much in the detail should give pause – especially from the perspective of closing the EU’s climate investment deficit.

With the dust settling from COP29's hard-fought negotiations on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), attention is shifting to how the climate finance goal will be met. The challenge is how to scale up financing for increasingly connected priorities in a challenging landscape of debt stress and cuts in official development assistance.

The 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) in Seville represents a milestone for delivering on development (including climate action) goals, a decade after the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. The “Seville Commitment” was adopted on June 30th, albeit in the absence of the United States – demonstrating that widespread support remains for a comprehensive package to finance development. However, the outcome also embodies the growing chasm between high-level commitments and the reality of financing for development and climate action on the ground. Recent research by I4CE attempts to bridge this gap on two crucial issues. 

As climate finance debates evolve from pledges to implementation, this report critically reviews the methodologies and narratives behind existing climate financing needs estimates to examine how they might be used to guide practical efforts in the years to come, and where the most urgent improvements are needed. From headline trillions to actual millions, the challenge ahead is not just about determining how much is missing – the focus should be on closing this gap in practice.

In this year’s edition, we assess these indicators retrospectively—over the past ten years for deep energy retrofits, and over the past five for electric mobility—to identify factors that have improved or worsened economic accessibility to transition solutions in recent years.

Climate negotiations are taking place next week in Bonn, with finance once again high on the agenda. COP 29 ended last year with a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) –revised climate finance target to replace the USD 100 billion goal. The NCQG decision put forward a commitment by developed countries to lead in providing USD 300 billion per year by 2035 for developing countries, as well as a proposal to work on a roadmap to scale up climate finance for developing countries to reach a level closer to the estimated needs –the ‘Baku to Belem Roadmap to 1.3T’ (USD 1.3 trillion). The latter must be delivered at the end of the year at COP 30, and strong efforts are being put in the task by the Brazilian Presidency.

Six years after its inception, this study aims to review this mechanism and its projects: what activities are being implemented in the field, what impact are they having on the climate, with what robustness or, on the contrary, what limitations in terms of measurement, environmental integrity, accessibility, etc.? This exercise is also intended to feed into the process of continuous improvement of the scheme and to provide feedback for the current implementation of the European carbon certification framework (Carbon removals and carbon farming: CRCF).

This 2025 edition of the Global Carbon Accounts presents a landscape of carbon pricing instruments through the lens of their current and potential contribution to scale up climate and development finance. Several jurisdictions are already using carbon revenues to support a range of policy objectives, including decarbonization efforts and support for economic actors most affected by the transition. Yet there is still potential for them to further contribute to fill the gap.

In a challenging geo-political context, Europe has a window of opportunity to lead on both climate action and industrial competitiveness. As Mario Draghi highlighted in his report last year, this can only happen if decarbonisation ambitions are backed by real investment - and there is an urgent need to boost those investment. The European Commission followed suit and pledged to be an “Investment Commission,” while reaffirming its commitment to implement the 2030 emission reduction targets and to stay to course on the longer-term targets.

With the second edition of our State of Europe’s Climate Investment report, we take stock of the development in investments supporting the climate transition in the EU27. The report assesses the real-economy annual investments needed to meet the 2030 targets set out in the Green Deal and Net Zero Industry Act for the energy, buildings, transport and clean tech manufacturing sectors. We track the actual investments in those sectors in the EU economy, highlight the deficits and analyse challenges to mobilise investments.

This report aims to support better use of financial intermediation by public development banks (PDBs) providing international development finance, helping PDBs work better together as a system, with a common understanding of where they contribute the most to low-emissions and climate-resilient development. It mainly focuses on financial intermediation through on-lending to public (government-owned) financial institutions in developing countries.

With Member States meeting this week to discuss the progress and future of EU R&I funding at the Competitiveness Council a group of civil society, research and cleantech organisations, including I4CE, have today issued an open letter urging EU policymakers to put clean technology research and innovation (R&I) at the centre of the bloc’s long-term […]