Raising the Stakes: A Survey of Public and Public-Private Fund Models and Initiatives to Mobilize Private Investment

The paper examines 27 PPCFIs with approximately US$41.3 billion in capitalization, finding a strong bias toward mitigation over adaptation and a preference for established markets over least-developed countries. It identifies significant hurdles in attracting private capital at the fund level, noting that only two of eleven funds aiming for private capital achieved sizeable investment. The authors recommend standardizing processes, increasing private sector awareness, and leveraging the Green Climate Fund to coordinate the fragmented landscape of climate finance.

• PPCFIs predominantly prioritize climate change mitigation over adaptation, largely because adaptation projects often lack clear revenue streams, making them less attractive to private investors.
• There is a geographic and market bias toward emerging market economies and established technology sectors, which may lead to the public sector crowding out private investment through concessional funding.
• Attracting private sector capital at the fund level has proven difficult; of the 11 PPCFIs that aimed to attract private capital, only the Climate Catalyst Fund and the Global Climate Partnership Fund received sizeable investments.
• The limited success in mobilizing private co-investment is attributed to a lack of attractive project pipelines, inadequate fund scale, restrictive institutional mandates, and a lack of established track records.
• PPCFIs utilize three primary disbursement approaches: direct investment into projects, indirect investment through intermediaries, and technical assistance, with many funds combining these methods to address both capacity and finance gaps.
• A small group of donor nations—Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—provide the majority of public funding for the surveyed PPCFIs, with significant resources directed toward the Climate Investment Funds.
• Operational inefficiencies, such as complex and redundant application processes and a lack of transparency, hinder private sector access to PPCFI funding, particularly for smaller companies and poorer countries.
• The authors suggest that the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and its Private Sector Facility could serve as a central hub to coordinate the PPCFI landscape and optimize the matching of finance supply to needs.

APA

Polycarp, C., Venugopal, S., Nagle, T., & Catania, A. (2013). Raising the Stakes: A Survey of Public and Public-Private Fund Models and Initiatives to Mobilize Private Investment. World Resources Institute. https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/raising_the_stakes.pdf

Chicago

Polycarp, Clifford, Shally Venugopal, Tom Nagle, and Andrew Catania. Raising the Stakes: A Survey of Public and Public-Private Fund Models and Initiatives to Mobilize Private Investment. World Resources Institute, 2013. https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/raising_the_stakes.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Polycarp |first1=Clifford |last2=Venugopal |first2=Shally |last3=Nagle |first3=Tom |last4=Catania |first4=Andrew |title=Raising the Stakes: A Survey of Public and Public-Private Fund Models and Initiatives to Mobilize Private Investment |publisher=World Resources Institute |date=November 2013 |url=https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/raising_the_stakes.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{polycarp2013raising, author = {Polycarp, Clifford and Venugopal, Shally and Nagle, Tom and Catania, Andrew}, title = {{Raising the Stakes: A Survey of Public and Public-Private Fund Models and Initiatives to Mobilize Private Investment}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, year = {2013}, month = nov, url = {https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/raising_the_stakes.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }