On 24 February 2023, a capacity-building workshop on climate finance was held successfully in Chengdu of Sichuan Province under the guidance of the provincial Department of Ecology and Environment of Sichuan and the People´s Bank of China (PBoC) Chengdu Branch. Supported by GIZ’s Sino-German Cooperation on Climate Change – Climate Partnership, the workshop was jointly organised by Climate Investment and Finance Association (CIFA), Ecology, Environment, and Urban Management Bureau of Tianfu New Area, and Sichuan United Environment Exchange. The workshop received more than 100 participants including policymakers, researchers, and representatives from financial institutions, enterprises as well as near-zero carbon industry parks in Sichuan.
Considering pilot work in climate investment and financing, keynote speeches were given by Mr. DING Hui, Director of the Comprehensive Affair Division of the Department of Climate Change from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), and Mr. ZHAO Le Chen, member of the party group, chief engineer of the Department of Ecology and Environment from Sichuan.
The workshop is one of a series of capacity-building events being organised by GIZ to accommodate the upskilling needs of national piloting on climate investment and finance and to enable Chinese financial institutions, companies, and government officials to make climate resilient investment decisions.
Against the background of achieving dual carbon goals, Mr DING Hui reiterated at the workshop that climate investment and financing, as an innovative task force, should focus on climate adaptive and resilient investment, while aiming to incentivise, guide, and support decarbonisation. His remarks stressed the achievements of Tianfu New Area as one of the first climate investment and finance pilot areas, especially in curbing the development of energy and carbon-intensive projects, developing carbon finance, strengthening financing tool innovation, fostering international cooperation, establishing a local climate investment and financing project database. For the next step, MEE will continue to promote the pilot work, accelerate financing cooperation with industries, and strengthen capacity-building.
Mr ZHAO Lechen provided background on climate investment and finance in accordance with the dual carbon goals. The Department of Ecology and Environment of Sichuan Province will coordinate with responsible institutions, focusing on leveraging resources in key areas and processes, to support climate investment and finance, especially strengthening the integrated service capacity of different kinds of service-providers and research institutions. Financing model innovation should play an essential role in emerging businesses and new scenarios in response to market demands.
Ms QI Lan, project director of Sustainable Finance at GIZ China, introduced the longstanding Sino-German cooperation on climate finance, green finance, and sustainable finance implemented by GIZ in China since 2015. Under the Emerging Markets Sustainability Dialogues, GIZ promoted the green bond market development in China by providing capacity-building for the whole ecosystem of green bond issuance, including finance regulators, issuers, underwriters, investors, and 3rd party verification service providers. From 2016 to 2017, GIZ piloted drought stress testing with 9 large banks globally, and in China GIZ cooperated with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). Over the past six years, GIZ had promoted a series of training on ESG investment, environmental and climate-related risk analysis (ERA) and environmental information disclosure. With the IKI project of Sino-German Cooperation on Climate Change – Climate Partnership, GIZ will support the further development of climate finance and investment in China through organising a series of Sino-German expert dialogues on climate finance policies and strategies, providing capacity-building measures and instruments, and enabling the technical exchange of financial market practices and product innovations. Moreover, the project will introduce how the German government and German public institutions facilitate climate-friendly low-carbon transformation by leveraging market forces. In the future, just-transition experiences from Germany will also be shared.
The training content is jointly tailored to suit the profile of participants. Experts from CIFA, PBoC, Carbon Finance Institute of China Industrial Bank, Center for Green Finance Research of Tsinghua University, Sichuan United Environment Exchange, and CECEP Hundred Technical Services (Beijing) delivered a comprehensive training program. This program covered topics including but not limited to domestic and international climate investment and financing policies and initiatives, carbon accounting for scope 3 emissions, ERA, climate and environment information disclosure, sustainable finance product innovation and market practices, ESG investment, and ESG risk management.
At the end of the capacity-building workshop, a memorandum of cooperation on climate investment and financing pilot projects was signed between the Ecology, Environment and Urban Management Bureau of Tianfu New District in Sichuan and the Ecology and Environment Bureau of Liangjiang New Area in Chongqing.
