Transformational change depends on more than what a project delivers during implementation. It depends on the markets, institutions, partnerships and policies that can sustain and scale change after Mitigation Action Facility support ends.
Every Mitigation Action Facility project has an end date. The ambition for the change it supports goes much further.
This is an important part of what transformational change means for the Mitigation Action Facility. Beyond reducing greenhouse gas emissions during implementation, projects seek to contribute to lasting changes in the systems and markets in which they operate. That can mean financial mechanisms that continue to channel capital, institutions with the capacity and incentives to act, policy and regulatory conditions that support low-carbon investment, businesses with viable models, and approaches that can be replicated or scaled.
These conditions are rarely created by grant funding alone. They depend on the wider ecosystem of public and private actors around a project – and on considering sustainability from the outset.
Designed for sustainability from the outset
For projects selected for the Detailed Preparation Phase (DPP), these questions begin well before implementation.
During the DPP, applicants work with the Technical Support Unit (TSU) to further develop the project concept and strengthen the conditions needed for successful implementation and lasting impact. Depending on the project, this can include structuring financial mechanisms – combining technical assistance with financial cooperation – so that the intervention is investment-ready; engaging the public and private partners the project depends on, including potential follow-on financiers; examining the relevant policy and regulatory environment; and considering how project-supported activities and approaches could be sustained, scaled or replicated beyond Mitigation Action Facility funding.
The same perspective extends across the Mitigation Action Facility’s portfolio. Through monitoring, evaluation and learning, and through its role as a Knowledge and Learning Hub, the Mitigation Action Facility captures and shares lessons from projects so that experience from one intervention can inform others and contribute to replication and transformational change.
In focus: Brazil – Sustainable Aviation Fuel
The Brazil – Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) project provides a useful illustration of how these questions can be considered before implementation begins.
The project is currently in the Detailed Preparation Phase, so it cannot yet demonstrate lasting impact. What it can illustrate is how a targeted climate finance intervention is being developed within a much larger emerging commercial ecosystem.
SAF currently accounts for less than 1% of global jet fuel use, and scaling up supply depends on reliable, sustainable feedstocks. The proposed project, led by Acelen Energia Renovável in partnership with Embrapa Agroenergia and SENAI CIMATEC, seeks to address an important part of this challenge by supporting Brazil’s first industrial-scale macaúba oil milling facility in Bahia. Macaúba is a native, non-food crop that can be cultivated on degraded land.
At full capacity, the proposed facility is expected to produce up to 97 million litres of macaúba oil annually, with the potential to supply around 85 million litres of SAF and achieve lifecycle greenhouse gas emission savings of up to 80% compared with fossil jet fuel.
What makes the project particularly relevant from a market perspective is the wider investment taking shape around it.
In July 2026, Acelen Renewables secured a USD 1.5 billion financing package for the construction of its renewable fuels biorefinery in Bahia, from a consortium of national and international financial institutions led by HSBC and the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The biorefinery itself sits outside the scope of the proposed Mitigation Action Facility project, but is expected to serve as the off-taker for the macaúba oil produced by the proposed milling operation, which would be supported through Mitigation Action Facility funding.
This distinction matters. Public and concessional climate finance can have its greatest potential for lasting impact when it addresses barriers that prevent viable low-carbon markets from developing, while engaging the private actors, financial institutions and other partners needed to carry investment forward.
The financing milestone also highlights the importance of integrated low-carbon value chains that combine climate, economic and social benefits. And it shows how targeted support for catalytic infrastructure, such as feedstock processing, can complement broader private investment and help accelerate the transition in hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation.
The proposed project also looks beyond the physical milling facility. Its design brings together commercial actors, research institutions and agricultural producers, including planned engagement with family farmers and small-scale producers, with the aim of strengthening capabilities and knowledge across the emerging macaúba value chain.
If successfully demonstrated, the approach could also generate lessons for the further development and potential replication of sustainable macaúba-based SAF value chains.
The Brazil – Sustainable Aviation Fuel project remains in the Detailed Preparation Phase. Implementation is subject to a future funding decision by the Mitigation Action Facility.
When Mitigation Action Facility funding has already ended: Colombia – Domestic Refrigeration
While Brazil shows how the conditions for sustainability can be considered during preparation, completed projects allow us to look at what actually remained after Mitigation Action Facility funding ended.
The Colombia – Domestic Refrigeration project, completed in 2024, worked with government, manufacturers, financial institutions and technicians to support a transformation of Colombia’s domestic refrigeration sector. Among other measures, the project supported manufacturers in converting production lines to introduce more energy-efficient models using natural refrigerants with lower global warming potential, strengthened technical capacity, and contributed to an enabling policy and regulatory environment.
The project also illustrates how different elements of a market ecosystem can reinforce one another: regulation creates stronger incentives for efficient appliances, manufacturers have the capacity to supply them, technicians have the skills to service new technologies, and financing and replacement mechanisms can help consumers access them.
The project contributed to the development of Resolution 40427, which updated Colombia’s energy efficiency labelling regulation (RETIQ), and the changes introduced through the project have helped embed more efficient, climate-friendly refrigeration within the sector. In parallel, Colombia banned the production and import of HFC-based domestic refrigerators through Resolution 0834 of 2022, as part of its commitment to the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol.
The project’s final evaluation and subsequent learning work provide an opportunity to look beyond outputs delivered during implementation and ask a more important question: which changes have become embedded in the sector?
Today, the converted production lines remain in operation, and the new refrigerator models continue to be manufactured and distributed in Colombia and neighbouring countries. More than 400 technicians trained through the project continue to apply best practices in servicing refrigerators that use natural refrigerants, dismantling old appliances, recovering reusable components and handling related equipment safely. Among them were trainers of trainers from Colombia’s National Learning Service (SENA), the country’s public vocational training body.
Financing is also continuing: a new credit line was recently launched for the project, using remaining project funds.
Mitigation Action Facility support has ended. The regulatory changes, technical capacity and manufacturing practices it helped bring about remain in place.
From projects to markets
Brazil and Colombia sit at very different points in the project cycle. One is still being prepared; the other has completed implementation. Together, however, they illustrate why the Mitigation Action Facility looks beyond individual project activities when considering transformational change.
Lasting mitigation depends on the ecosystem surrounding an intervention: private businesses prepared to invest, financial institutions able to finance low-carbon solutions, public institutions capable of maintaining an enabling policy and regulatory environment, local actors with the knowledge and capacity to participate, and approaches that can be replicated or scaled.
Grant funding can help address barriers, reduce risks and demonstrate new approaches. But the longer-term objective is a market in which low-carbon investment increasingly becomes viable without continued concessional support.
That is where partnerships matter. Governments can create enabling conditions. Financial institutions can develop and finance new markets. Businesses can turn low-carbon approaches into commercially viable models. Research and technical institutions can retain and spread knowledge. And experience from one project can help others move faster.
For the Mitigation Action Facility, this is an important part of transformational change: not only what happens while support is present, but what can continue, grow and be replicated after it is gone.
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