The climate issue must take its rightful place and be central in all economic thinking today, whether it be growth, inflation, employment, inequality, international trade or financial stability. When I4CE was founded in 2015, many still viewed climate as an issue for tomorrow. Fortunately, I4CE has helped combat this lack of foresight.

The Institute was founded under the impetus of Pierre Ducret, who served as its president for five years and put it on track to become the Institute it is today. The I4CE team, led by Benoît Leguet, has developed innovative methodologies and pioneering work in many areas. These include the analysis of climate investments, the climate impact of public budgets, carbon certification and the contribution of the financial system in the fight against climate change. This work has proven to be very rewarding. Thanks to this work, the Institute has been able to contribute effectively to the debates on the French recovery plan, it leads a global network of 60 financial institutions and France has adopted a low-carbon label.

The challenge facing the Institute today is as great as ever. It will no longer be a matter of simply persuading or enlightening, but also of helping to frame the economic and political debates of tomorrow. This will require continued investment in research and pioneering work. I am pleased to have joined the Institute to help it stay on the cutting edge, to grow, to reinvent itself when necessary, to fulfill its mission and to have an ever greater impact.

To mobilise the financial world in the fight against climate change, France launched, in 2015, a climate disclosure obligation requiring the largest investors to explain what they are doing with regards to the climate. This pioneering initiative was quickly followed by other countries, however the results of the first year’s reporting have been disappointing, as evidenced by the poor quality of the information published by most investors.
To remedy this, I4CE proposed implementing a set of minimum quality criteria for the methodologies used by investors to measure their exposure to climate risks or their contribution to the objectives of the Paris Agreement. This is the approach that has been adopted by France. The new law on the matter was implemented by decree in May 2021. Will the EU, which is also committed to revising its climate–related disclosure obligations, do the same? To be continued.

The European Commission published its new sustainable finance strategy in July 2021. The good news is that this strategy no longer focuses exclusively on sustainable finance! It not only seeks to promote this niche but also to regulate the financial stakeholders and products that wish to reconcile economic performance and climate protection. It is indeed all finance that the Commission wishes to regulate so that it takes into account the climate challenge.
The Commission has listened to the proposals of many experts on this subject and in particular those published by I4CE in early 2021: training of financial advisors, clarification of fiduciary duty, transparency of non-financial rating agencies, etc. These are proposals that seek to ensure financial stability and the proper functioning of the markets as well as to accelerate the financing of the low carbon transition.

Development banks have devoted a lot of effort to Climate Finance. They have greatly increased their support for activities that have direct co-benefits in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions or adapting to climate change. However, in order to stay relevant to the Paris Agreement, and the commitments made by many to align themselves with its objectives, they still must go further! They must ensure that ALL the activities they finance do not hinder the ambition of the climate objectives.
To help them concretely align with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, I4CE has teamed with NewClimate Institute to launch a Toolkit. Initially developed for the International Development Finance Club and its 26 development banks around the world, it is now available free of charge to all financial institutions. In the run-up to COP26 in Glasgow, many financial institutions are developing new strategies and action plans, so the toolkit launch has come at the right time.

For the first time in October 2020, the French government published, along with its draft budget, an environmental assessment of the budget. This official Green Budget provides a great deal of satisfaction for I4CE. The Institute has constantly asked the State to develop this new tool to aid transparency and the management of public action. The Institute had even conducted its own climate assessment of the State budget.
Following the State, local authorities are now able to evaluate their budgets under the spectrum of climate. I4CE has published the first methodology for evaluating local budgets. This has been developed with many partners and tested by several large cities and metropolises. This methodology is available free of charge to all local authorities, to help them question their spending and align it with their climate ambitions.

40 billion euros! This is the amount negotiated between the State and the Regions as part of the new generation of "State-Region Plan Contracts". These ContractsPER will define the priorities of public investment in the territories until 2027: it is therefore imperative that they are consistent with the ambition of France for the climate and that they allow the territories and their inhabitants to meet the challenge of climate change.

This is why I4CE wished to draw attention to these contracts, which are too often overlooked. Its various analyses have highlighted their decisive character for the climate and the weaknesses of the CPER projects currently under negotiation, and have enabled it to question the State and the Regions. Although the new CPERs will see some improvements compared to the previous ones, there are still black spots, starting with the lack of consideration for the challenge of adaptation.

Since the beginning of the global health crisis, I4CE experts have multiplied their analyses and proposals to combine economic recovery and climate protection. In particular, they have quantified the public funding needed for France to catch up in the energy renovation of buildings, clean mobility and low-carbon energy production. While they were pleased to see that the amounts allocated to these sectors by the French stimulus plan broadly corresponded to their estimates, they immediately asked the question, what next?
The billions allocated to the climate in the stimulus plan will expire in 2022, but the need for public funding will not have diminished by then; in fact, it is likely to increase significantly. Therefore, I4CE has continued to publish analyses to help today's public decision makers anticipate the post-2022 period and future presidential candidates to prepare their climate budget.

The news reminds us every summer and it has now become obvious, that France will have to adapt to the inevitable consequences of climate change. As a nation, is it devoting sufficient human resources and public money to this challenge? To answer this question, it is important we understand where public spending is needed, the level of need and what amounts are allocated currently. Presently this is all unclear and parliamentarians are the first to complain about it.
This needs to be clarified, which is what I4CE has started to do over the last 12 months. This is pioneering and long-term work that the Institute will continue so that the State, local authorities and all competent public stakeholders have the means - and in particular the human means - essential to face extreme climate events and take up the challenge of adaptation.

Companies, local authorities and even individuals are ready to offer financial assistance to farmers and foresters who reduce their greenhouse gas emissions or store carbon in the soil. However, to finance such projects, they need guarantees on their quality. This is why I4CE, with many partners, has laid the foundations of a carbon certification framework, that has been officially adopted by France to become the Low Carbon Standard.
I4CE supports the development of this standard and although still in its infancy, it has progressed significantly in the last 12 months. More than 100 forestry projects have been labelled, as well as a collective project involving 300 farmers. Another 600 farmers should soon follow. These successes go hand in hand with the emergence of critics who allow the label to continue to evolve and improve.

In recent years, I4CE has developed and contributed to the development of tools such as the "Panorama of climate financing" or the "Green Budget", which show how the low-carbon transition is financed today and how it could be financed tomorrow, which allow better steering of public action and make it more transparent.

These tools have proven their worth in France, particularly in the development of the French stimulus plan, and this is why I4CE participates in their international dissemination, helps actors in other countries to adapt them to their national context and learns from their experiences. The Institute has thus initiated several new collaborations on the "Green Budget" during the last twelve months, in Costa Rica and with nearly twenty member states of the European Union. And I4CE is proud to announce that Morocco and Poland now have their own Climate Finance Panorama!

Since its creation, and even before it took the name I4CE and changed its status, the Institute has created places for dialogue; sometimes places for controversy but also, above all, for the exchange of experiences and information.
I4CE has just celebrated the 5th anniversary of the Climate Action in Financial Institutions Initiative, for which it provides the scientific secretariat. This initiative now brings together more than 60 public and private financial institutions that want to learn from each other. Despite the global health crisis, meetings over the past 12 months have been more frequent than ever.
The Climate Agriculture and Carbon Forestry Clubs have also continued to meet, mostly by videoconference. Both organisations celebrated anniversaries as well, 8 years for the first and 10 years for the second. During this occasion, a new registration system was introduced to allow smaller players - whether companies, scientific organizations or NGOs - to participate in the clubs and enhance their skills and understanding of regulatory changes and their impacts on the food and forestry sectors.

In 2020, the I4CE budget reached 2.9 million euros. It continues to grow with the development of new international activities and new local authority projects.

What is this money used for? Primarily, these funds are used to employ the experts that work for I4CE and the support staff that assist them on a daily basis: administration, communication and management. Unlike other comparable institutes or think tanks, I4CE has chosen to produce its studies with experts who are employed directly by the Institute and are developing their skills within the organisation. This approach eliminates the need to outsource experts who are volunteers, paid on a per-assignment basis or having working groups that bring together experts from other organisations.

4CE is part of the approach launched by Labos 1point5 to reduce the environmental footprint of research activities. Since 2019, the Institute has committed to publishing its own carbon footprint every year. This is an opportunity to find out how much I4CE emits and where the Institute’s greenhouse gas emissions come from. A clear understanding of this carbon footprint is also a prerequisite for action. It is then a question of using this carbon assessment to structure a dynamic plan to reduce emissions. For example, the Institute has committed to stop flying if a low-carbon alternative exists that takes less than 6 hours.

The last carbon assessment carried out by I4CE shows that the Institute emitted 66 tCO2e in 2020.

This assessment covers all areas of the Institute from manufacturing through to communications, the scope of this assessment includes the use of equipment, building and staff resourcing as well as travel of its employees (see illustration below on the scope of analysis). In relation to the number of employees, I4CE emits 2.6 tCO2e/year/FTE . In comparison, the average annual carbon footprint of a French person is 11.5 tCO2e.