Shifting voluntary climate finance to the high-hanging fruit of climate

The NewClimate Institute report defines 'high-hanging fruit' as decarbonisation technologies and measures that are currently inaccessible to host governments due to extraordinary costs or insurmountable barriers. The report argues that targeting these projects is essential to ensure climate mitigation ambition is enhanced rather than compromised, and proposes several interventions to develop a project pipeline and redirect voluntary climate finance toward these high-cost or first-of-a-kind technologies.

• The report defines 'high hanging fruit of mitigation potential' as decarbonisation technologies and measures that host country governments cannot access in the near- or medium-term because of 'extraordinary costs or other insurmountable barriers that cannot reasonably be overcome.'
• To enable market mechanisms to finance high-hanging fruit, the report suggests redefining 'additionality' to include a 'demonstration of project inaccessibility.'
• The report recommends several interventions to build a pipeline for high-hanging fruit projects, including the introduction of labels to distinguish between 'possible' and 'guaranteed' additionality, the establishment of funds for climate contributions to reach projects ignored by existing market mechanisms, and a more proactive role for corporate leaders and intermediaries in identifying projects.
• The report identifies illustrative examples of potential high-hanging fruit technologies in specific sectors and locations: building heat in Mongolia, transport in Indonesia, and agriculture in Georgia.

APA

NewClimate Institute (2023). Shifting voluntary climate finance to the high-hanging fruit of climate. http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/shifting-voluntary-climate-finance-to-the-high-hanging-fruit-of-climate

Chicago

NewClimate Institute. Shifting voluntary climate finance to the high-hanging fruit of climate. 2023. http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/shifting-voluntary-climate-finance-to-the-high-hanging-fruit-of-climate.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=NewClimate Institute |title=Shifting voluntary climate finance to the high-hanging fruit of climate |date=21 July 2023 |url=http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/shifting-voluntary-climate-finance-to-the-high-hanging-fruit-of-climate |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{newclimateinstitute2023shifting, author = {{NewClimate Institute}}, title = {{Shifting voluntary climate finance to the high-hanging fruit of climate}}, institution = {NewClimate Institute}, year = {2023}, month = jul, url = {http://www.newclimate.org/resources/publications/shifting-voluntary-climate-finance-to-the-high-hanging-fruit-of-climate}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }