This makes it imperative to understand the early efforts of the UK and other donors in mobilising private sector engagement in climate compatible development (CCD), and identify key trends.
In the absence of agreed definitions for private finance activities in the climate finance literature and community of practice, this Background Note proposes a definition for Private Climate Finance Support (PCFS) and reviews interventions by British actors to mobilise private sector activity.
It finds that the UK has a number of channels and instruments through which it is supporting private sector action on climate change. Many of these are managed by intermediaries, with variations in their approaches to public reporting on goals and outcomes. Private equity firms, in particular, have disclosed little information to the public on the particular projects and recipients that they are financing. For UK interventions where project level information is disclosed, our review finds that, the majority of private finance climate support (PCFS) goes to climate change mitigation programmes and projects in upper middle-income countries.