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.

• Evaluating Clean Energy Public Finance Mechanisms

       This November 2011 report was prepared for the UNEP SEF Alliance by Irbaris and the Climate Bonds Initiative. The report highlights leading practices in the design and delivery of clean energy public finance mechanisms (PFMs) conducted through in-depth research, analysis, and semi-constructed interviews with programme managers.  This report showcases a methodology to evaluate the performance of PFMs and their suitability for replication in other applications, policy contexts, geographies across the clean energy continuum, which represents stages of development: R&D, innovaiton, demonstration, targeted deployment, untargeted diffusion, and market independence to support the growth of an industry.

• Weathering the Storm  - Public funding for low-carbon energy in the post financial crisis era

        This 2010 report issued by UNEP SEF Alliance and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), which evaluates government funding of programs supporting the low-carbon energy economy, suggests this is not the time for national governments to reduce their commitments. The findings, based on analysis of the G20 and SEF Alliance members and underlined by quantitative research from NREF's Intelligence database, examines the trends of public and private capital for clean energy technologies along the value chain. The report cautions governments that have recently funded clean energy technology development and deployment using stimulus funding that low-carbon clean energy funding should not be reduced, but expanded.

• Public guarantees study

         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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