The publications listed below can be downloaded by clicking on the corresponding icons to the right. A more extensive list of research that is relevant to setting up and running effective clean energy public finance programmes is available in the resources section, here.
Public guarantees study
***NEW RELEASE***
This 2010 release, titled "Publicly Backed Guarantees as Policy Instruments to Promote Clean Energy", is the second in the financing mechanisms series. It assesses the advantages and disadvantages of using different types of publicly backed guarantee structures at the various stages of clean energy product and technology innovation and deployment, examining the experience of public financing agencies and relevant lessons learned. The main intended audiences are programme designers and implementers, as well as programme strategists and policymakers.
The economic impact of public clean energy investment
This 2009 SEF Alliance report, fully titled "Why Clean Energy Public Investment Makes Economic Sense - The Evidence Base", provides an analysis of the connection between government clean energy spending and various measures of economic health. This work was commissioned by the SEF Alliance in response to the current global economic downturn in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of why and how countercyclical investment in sustainable energy by the public sector can be a sound economic response to recession.
Public venture capital study
This is the first piece of specialised research commissioned directly by the SEF Alliance members. The report examines the current clean energy venture financing landscape with a specific focus on the role of public sector-sponsored venture capital. It finds that public venture capital can catalyse private investment and fill the significant funding gaps that hamper commercialisation of clean technologies. It also looks at the core commonalities and differences in the approaches, structures, and metrics of success for existing public venture capital funds.
Public finance for climate change mitigation
This report, published in December 2008, provides an overview of mechanisms being used by the public sector to help scale up the climate mitigation markets, with a particular focus on the clean energy sector.
The SEFI Public Finance Alliance
This report serves two main purposes:
1) to consolidate relevant information about the SEF Alliance - its structure, activities, target participants, and the contribution it can make to the development of global clean energy markets; and
2) to demonstrate - via concrete examples of innovative actions - some of the synergies and overlaps among programmes of relevant sustainable energy financing entities around the world.
Sustainable energy public finance mechanisms
These two reports prepared jointly by BASE and UNEP provide analyses of public finance mechanisms that are being used by governments around the world to help increase investment in sustainable energy and to catalyse growth of the sector. The first report is on public finance mechanisms for sustainable energy generally, the second focuses more specifically on energy efficiency measures.
Public finance mechanisms for sustainable energy are publicly backed interventions, both financial and non-financial, that help close these financing gaps, catalyse private investment and accelerate market uptake of renewable energy and energy efficiency measures. They include financing instruments such as contingent grants, soft loans, incubator programs, mezzanine and equity funding and guarantee programmes.
Public finance mechanisms can be used to fill the financing gaps that market failures leave in the various stages of sustainable energy development, from the idea through to commercialisation. These gaps keep clean energy technologies, projects, and enterprises from reaching commercial viability.
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