The International Finance Corporation (IFC)-Canada Climate Change Program promotes private sector financing for clean energy projects, through the use of concessional funds to catalyze investments in renewable, low-carbon technologies that would not otherwise happen. The program received $276.6 million of Canada's Fast-start finance to invest at concessional, or below market, alongside with IFC’s own funds to enable climate change investments that would not otherwise happen, due to market barriers preventing sponsors or other financiers from making those investments. A portion of the program funds is also used to fund advisory services work to build local capacity, fill information gaps in the market, and enable countries to adopt regulatory and business environments that encourage the private sector to invest in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and cleaner technologies.
IFC and Canada are committed to transparency of climate finance, and to demonstrating leadership in this respect. As such, the IFC-Canada program is piloting the reporting of project-level information on expected greenhouse gas reductions. These are preliminary, up-front estimates based on available information prior to project implementation and evolving methodologies. Actual reductions may be different from these estimates. Canada will continue to monitor and evaluate and report on the results of the program including to update these estimates as they are refined.