The State of Cities Climate Finance 2024

The methodology employs Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) to define urban scope and tracks primary capital flows for mitigation and adaptation. It combines project-level data from sources like the OECD-DAC and BNEF with capital expenditure estimations for transport, buildings, and energy systems. Needs assessments are derived from top-down global models, adjusted by regional urban population shares and sector-specific inclusion criteria.

• The report defines urban climate finance as financial resources used to limit city-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and address climate-related risks faced by cities.
• To ensure consistent comparisons across different administrative boundaries, the methodology uses the concept of Functional Urban Areas (FUAs), which account for the economic and functional scope of cities based on daily human movement.
• The tracking methodology excludes several types of finance to avoid double counting and carbon lock-in, including policy-induced revenue support mechanisms (except for electric vehicle subsidies), secondary market transactions, and efficiency retrofits for coal-fired power plants.
• Urban climate finance flows are tracked using a combination of project-level data and capital expenditure estimations; for the 2019-2020 period, USD 540.9 billion was tracked, increasing to USD 830.5 billion for 2021-2022.
• Project-level tagging for urban relevance utilizes four keyword sets: urban generic inclusion, sector-specific inclusion, a list of approximately 12,000 administrative city names, and non-urban exclusion keywords.
• Transport capital expenditure estimations assume that 90% of electric and hydrogen vehicles (including cars, vans, trucks, and buses) and their recharging infrastructure are urban investments.
• For buildings and infrastructure, the methodology applies different urban share assumptions by region: 90% for China, 75% for Europe, 80% for the USA, and 80% for the 'Rest of the world'.
• Energy systems estimations for small solar panels (under 1MW) use regional urban share proxies, ranging from 25% in Latin America and the Caribbean and South Asia to 80% in most other regions.
• The needs assessment methodology uses a 'top-down' approach, applying urban inclusion assumptions to global 1.5°C scenarios; for example, 90% of transport needs are classified as urban.
• Adaptation needs are categorized by sub-sector, with river flood needs included at 100% because the underlying model is exclusively urban, while agriculture and terrestrial biodiversity are excluded as mostly rural.

APA

Climate Policy Initiative (2024). The State of Cities Climate Finance 2024. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/CCFLA-State-of-Cities-Methodology.pdf

Chicago

Climate Policy Initiative. The State of Cities Climate Finance 2024. 2024. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/CCFLA-State-of-Cities-Methodology.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Climate Policy Initiative |title=The State of Cities Climate Finance 2024 |date=September 2024 |url=https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/CCFLA-State-of-Cities-Methodology.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{climatepolicyinitiative2024state, author = {{Climate Policy Initiative}}, title = {{The State of Cities Climate Finance 2024}}, institution = {Climate Policy Initiative}, year = {2024}, month = sep, url = {https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/CCFLA-State-of-Cities-Methodology.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }