About the Mitigation Action Facility
The Mitigation Action Facility – an agile, grant-based multi-donor fund – drives sectoral decarbonisation.
The Mitigation Action Facility, evolved from the NAMA Facility in 2023, as a go-to platform for providing technical support and climate finance for ambitious mitigation projects with an aim of decarbonising key sectors of the economy and society.
It continues to fund ambitious climate change mitigation projects to implement Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and long-term strategies (LTS) that are central to meeting the Paris Agreement goals.
The Facility primarily focuses on three priority sectors – energy, transport and industry, but remains open to cross-sectoral projects linked to one of the priority sectors. As highlighted in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, energy, transport and industry cumulatively account for more than 40 GtCO2e, or 67% of global annual GHG emissions (as of 2021). To shift the targeted sector towards a carbon-neutral development pathway, the Mitigation Action Facility selects innovative projects that can catalyse sector-wide transformational change.
Energy
Transport
Industry
These efforts can help close the gap in climate finance required to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. According to the Breakthrough Agenda Report, provision of technical and financial assistance are needed to improve the affordability, accessibility and attractiveness of clean technologies and sustainable practices.
Activities and aims of the Mitigation Action Facility
The Mitigation Action Facility continues to launch annual competitive Calls enabling partner countries, or organisations on their behalf, to apply for funding. The most ambitious and feasible climate change mitigation projects are selected for support through a comprehensive assessment process.
The grant-based funding provided by the Mitigation Action Facility is used for a combination of technical assistance measures and financial cooperation. The aim of the latter is to develop and offer market-based, sustainable and scalable financial mechanisms unlocking investments in technologies and practices that lead to a reduction of GHG emissions.
Mitigation Action Facility support, in the form of technical assistance, not only catalyses investments, but also strengthens capacities and triggers behaviour change, resulting in sector-wide shifts to improve livelihoods and create other co-benefits – environmental, social and economic. Since 2012, the portfolio has grown to 47 projects across 33 countries and a total funding volume of EUR 668 million (as of February 2023).
What we do
We provide grant-based funding for transformational climate action projects that contribute to reducing global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in alignment with the Breakthrough Agenda.
We help strengthen partner countries’ capacity through diverse technical and financial instruments to create replicable projects that enable innovation and upscaling.
We gather and share learnings from our portfolio and collaborate within the climate finance community to speed up NDC implementation.
Relevant publications about the Mitigation Action Facility:
Mission & Vision
Our Vision is to
- Accelerate decarbonisation to keep temperature rises to below 1.5 degrees Celsius by financing measures that shift priority sectors in a country towards a sustainable, carbon-neutral pathway.
Our Mission is to
- Finance innovative projects that remove specific barriers preventing sectoral decarbonisation and have strong potential for up-scaling and replication;
- Deliver finance to support technical assistance (e.g., policy advice, capacity development, awareness-raising, technology transfer) that enables capacity and policy development;
- Unlock investment opportunities by providing tailor-made climate finance to fund projects with the potential to:
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- i. Strengthen country capacities to deliver carbon-neutral activities and closely align these activities with the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), long-term strategies (LTS) and other relevant climate and development plans;
- ii. Pilot financing models to overcome market barriers to carbon-neutral development;
- iii. Deploy innovative technologies and approaches, which require donor financing to support national development plans;
- iv. Boost participation of the private sector to deliver ambitious climate action.
Key Features
- Country-driven and Embedded in National Development Strategies and Plans: Projects demonstrate national embeddedness, and integrate into sector-wide programmes or policies with specific reference to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)
- Transparency, accessibility and responsiveness: The Mitigation Action Facility clearly communicates eligibility to ensure wide appeal and accessibility across sectors and countries at the beginning of the project cycle. It offers enhanced late-stage assistance to projects to help transition to self-sustainability and facilitate wider transformational changes through scaling up and replication. Through its Information Policy, the Mitigation Action Facility aims to provide fair and equal access and treatment to all applicants and stakeholders. Impartiality and independence is ensured through external assessors who evaluate the Mitigation Facility as a whole and individual projects.
- Tailor-made Financial Cooperation and Technical Assistance: Mitigation Action Facility funding can be used to develop financial mechanisms and deliver technical assistance to tackle wider policy, regulatory or other barriers that inhibit investment and constrain carbon-neutral development. Examples of technical supports include technical assistance, regulatory frameworks and capacity building workshop for institutions involved, whereas financial support mechanisms can include grants, loan guarantees and concessional loans.
Means of Support
Outcomes of Project
Financial Cooperation (FC)
- Investment grants
- Concessional loans
- Guarantee funds
- Development of bankable project pipeline
- Advisory services (e. g. banking training, design of financial support mechanisms)
Technical Cooperation (TC)
- Training and Capacity Development
- Pre-feasibility studies
- Development of bankable project pipeline
- Knowledge exchange
- Advisory services MRV development
- High Quality Monitoring and Evaluation: Conducted throughout the project, portfolio and Facility levels, the Mitigation Action Facility’s Monitoring and Evaluation Framework explains our approach to cross-cutting topics such as gender and social equity and offers guidelines for projects.
- A Culture of Learning: As a Knowledge and Learning Hub, the Mitigation Action Facility strives to inspire broad and ambitious climate action by extracting and fostering lessons learnt from projects nd sharing them between projects and with the wider community. We aim to build and share knowledge, adapt and improve processes to attract high-quality projects, remain flexible to the needs of emerging economies, facilitate exchange between projects and finally, form strategic partnerships with other climate finance institutions, programmes and think tanks.