Achieving Speed and Scale in Climate Finance: The Platforms as Meta-Intermediaries

In the midst of the persistent climate investment gap, a renewed focus has emerged on blended finance to strategically use public and philanthropic capital to catalyze substantial amounts of additional private sector investment for climate projects. However, in today’s complex and fragmented climate finance landscape, investors, intermediaries, and project developers cannot find one another in an efficient and effective manner. This, in turn, incurs significant transaction, search, and opportunity costs, posing a substantial impediment to the progress that is needed to enhance the quantity and quality of climate finance. Without an effective mechanism that can mitigate the mismatch between supply of and demand for climate finance, it is unlikely that blended finance can achieve its potential to effectively mobilize private capital at scale for systemic and transformative climate actions.