The Landscape of domestic climate investment and finance flows: Methodological lessons from five years of application in France

The transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy requires an unprecedented redirection and scaling-up of investment and finance to adapt economic and societal systems. In comparison with these investment needs, the tracking of current domestic investment levels has been patchy in both developed and developing countries. This article details the methodology developed by I4CE - Institute for Climate Economics and its results in measuring domestic climate investment and finance flows in a coherent, sound and replicable fashion into a single 'Landscape'. Applied for the last five years in France, the results allow the assessment of the share of climate investment in domestic gross fixed capital formation. It also tracks financial instruments used by project developers to cover their capital expenditures. The 2017 French Landscape identified climate investment reaching €32bn in 2016, with variations in sources of capital and uses of financial instruments across sectors and types of project developers. These results support decision-makers in France and allow comparative assessments when contrasted with similar studies conducted in other E.U. countries.