Climate change action

FGEF strategy on climate change

  • Global warming is a challenge for the entire planet

    Global warming is the result of an intensified greenhouse effect, which itself is caused by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) from human activities that involve fuel production and consumption, transport, industry, housing, waste, agriculture and deforestation. Since the beginning of the industrial age, GHG concentrations in the atmosphere have increased by 35% and will endanger living conditions in every one of the world’s regions unless effective steps are taken in the very near future.

    Awareness of the problem prompted 189 countries to ratify the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. In 1997, 141 countries signed the Kyoto Protocol, which entered into force in February 2005. The industrialised “Annex 1” countries have undertaken to reduce their total emissions to at least 5% below 1990 levels during the period from 2008 to 2012, with each industrialised country required to achieve its own reduction targets.

    Climate change has become a major international policy issue in the last 20 years of mounting awareness of its dangers. It raises crucial questions regarding the differentiated responsibilities of States and how efforts should be distributed among them, and on development and research policies and technological choices.

    Solidarity among countries is crucial to act effectively against climate change and to develop appropriate responses to its foreseeable consequences, especially in the most disadvantaged countries which are also the most vulnerable.

  • MITIGATION: reducing and curbing greenhouse gas emissions

    The FGEF encourages projects for climate change mitigation projects that reduce or curb the use of non-renewable fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions, by promoting:

    • Uses of renewable and low-emission energy,
    • Biomass-to-energy systems,
    • Energy-efficient production systems,
    • Improved energy efficiency in housing, transport, industry and agriculture,
    • Carbon storage in forests, soils and subsoils.

  • ADAPTATION: reducing vulnerability to climate change

    Since 2005, the FGEF has also supported projects designed to strengthen capacities for adaptation in developing countries, focusing on surveillance, knowledge building and resilience.

    Climate change has many different impacts, from changing patterns of rainfall and increasingly frequent extreme weather events to sea level rise, frost damage to crops or the increasing vulnerability of biodiversity. These effects have to be anticipated and adaptation strategies developed for the different sectors affected, including the environment, infrastructure, health, agriculture, energy and tourism.

  • Sourcing and structuring SPECIALISED FINANCING for energy efficiency and renewable energy

    • Specialised investment funds for energy efficiency and renewable energy
       
      investment financing is still a weak point in the development of energy efficiency policies. The main recent innovation in investment support in the relevant sectors has been the creation of specialised public-private investment funds that can be used directly to support large-scale projects or to support energy utilities developing their own high-performance projects (combined heat and power, rational energy use or renewable energy development).
    • Lines of credit or guarantees

    Developing renewable energy and energy efficiency in both North and South depends on suitably adapted financing, through dedicated lines of credit for example. To be effective, these lines of credit have to be extended together with, amongst others, permanently available expertise and tools for analysis within each bank and an appropriate legislative and regulatory framework.
    Since 2007, the FGEF has developed a series of projects to accompany these lines of credit.
     

    • Financing mitigation through the “flexible mechanisms” under the Kyoto Protocol