Earlier this month, the LoCaL Matchmaker project organized its first workshop facilitating a discussion between city representatives and investors on how to finance urban mitigation projects.

The workshop took place in the newly renovated WRI building in Washington DC on the sidelines of the Climate Action Summit. Four city representatives from Belo Horizonte, Recife, Medellin and Santa Monica presented on their plans to reduce emissions in their cities via concrete projects. The proposed solutions included bus rapid transit, building efficiency and bike sharing master plans.

Public and private investors discuss matchmaking

The presentations facilitated a discussion among both public sector investors, including the World Bank Group, IADB, AFD and GEF and two private sector investors from the Closed Loop Fund and Global Environment Fund, on how a matchmaking service could help them find these kind of projects and make them attractive to financiers by various funding mechanisms.

The discussion illustrated the function of the matchmaking service:

• To connect city representatives and investors,
• As a facilitator to help cities prioritize concrete climate action projects that can be marketed to capital providers.

Challenges for cities and investors

Indicators for ensuring quality in terms of financial feasibility and sustainable development were discussed in detail by all parties. Cities highlighted the difficulty of finding finance for smaller projects below 20 mln USD and aligning several departments within their city, including finance and sustainability experts, to this same goal. Investors on the other hand highlighted credit worthiness barriers and the crucial role for development banks to function as leverage private finance via guarantees and de-risking facilities.

Our next workshop: tackling these challenges

The next matchmaker workshop will try to tackle some of these challenges by creating clear guidelines and indicators for cities to present and market their projects to investors and discussing the role of early-stage planning and blended finance with both public sector and institutional investors present in the room.

All in all, although no projects were financed, the day included some successful matchmaking!

More information on future events

LoCaL will organise more Matchmaking events in future, keep an eye on our website for the latest events.

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