Climate Policy Initiative

Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) is an analysis and advisory not-for-profit organization with deep expertise in finance and policy. Their mission is to help governments, businesses, and financial institutions develop a sustainable and resilient global economy. CPI has six offices around the world in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, the United Kingdom, and the United States

As a summer climate finance intern, I supported projects focused on financing climate adaptation, investing in early-stage climate projects in developing countries, green finance frameworks, and non-profit financial and operational management.

Financial Innovation for Climate Adaptation in Africa 2022

The Global Center on Adaptation partnered with CPI to publish a report on how to accelerate climate adaptation finance in Africa over the coming decade. As part of this report, I wrote two case studies: Tracking Domestic Public Finance for Adaptation in Kenya and Egypt’s Sovereign Bond.

The project enabled me to deep-dive on how adaptation finance is capitalized and tracked by national and sub-national entities as well as engaging with subject matter experts from the World Bank and Egyptian Ministry of Finance to solicit best practices and recommendations for other countries looking to scale adaptation projects.

Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance

As a public-private partnership, the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance (Lab) catalyzes government and private sector efforts to scale up climate finance. Since 2014, the Lab has mobilized $3 billion USD across 49 innovative solutions advancing energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable transport, climate-smart agriculture, and curbing deforestation.

This project conducted an a comprehensive ex-post analysis on the Lab process and understanding the lessons-learned over seven cycles of climate investing. In particular, I looked at the Lab instruments which were discontinued and sought to assess the primary reasons that each inactive instrument failed to materialize, compiling potential red flags that could predict an instrument’s failure.

I analyzed six instruments funded in Brazil, India, Nigeria, and Rwanda which focused on climate-smart agriculture, rooftop solar power, and battery recycling. The analysis decomposed project findings into three areas to predict the success of future early-stage climate investments.

(1) Proponent actionability, including internal team dynamics/politics and relationship with funders.

(2) Instrument maturity, including refining the stage of development the instrument was in before entry into the Lab.

(3) Market fit, including the lack of a sizeable consumer or investor market.

Coalition of Finance Ministers

The Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action brings together fiscal and economic policymakers from over 80 countries in leading the global climate response.

The Coalition came to CPI to develop a paper outlining levers for ministries to support more net zero commitments and ensure their credibility. This included three case studies and final recommendations for ministries to support the realignment of trillions of USD in financial institutions assets towards low carbon pathways by 2050.

As part of this report, I supported analyses looking at:

• Endorsement/adoption of the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) tool and the Paris Agreement Capital Transition Assessment (PACTA) standard
  
• Evaluating commitments of central banks, development finance institutions, commercial banks, asset owners, asset managers and owners in meeting the U.N. Race to Zero targets
  
• Case studies of Indonesia’s Green Taxonomy 2.0 and efforts from the Rwandan Ministry of Finance to mobilize private sector climate investment

International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure

The International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI) is a global coalition of engineering, investment, city and philanthropic stakeholders to accelerate resilient and sustainable infrastructure solutions.

As part of a project with ICSI, I wrote a case study on Climate Investor Two (CI2) – a blended finance facility delivering water, sanitation, and oceans infrastructure projects in emerging markets. This included analysis on the facility’s investment criteria and capital allocation framework as well as its three stage structure comprising of 1) a development fund (DF), 2) a construction equity fund (CEF), and 3) a climate credit fund.

Human Resources: CPI Staff and Budget Allocation

CPI is a growing organization which is experiencing exponential growth in business and staff size. In order to facilitate efficient and accurate allocation of staff and budget resources across the organization, I worked with CPI’s operations leads to gather requirements and develop a new project staffing template and workflow.

This project provided unique insight into the business structure of non-profit organizations and optimal ways to staff projects in a way that aligns availability, workload, cost, and skillsets.