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AFD official: About one million tons of emissions avoided in AFD projects last year
Clémence Vidal de la Blache – Country Director in Egypt of the French Development Agency ( AFD) – said the emissions avoided by projects financed by the AFD represented close to one million tons last year on energy and agricultural track.
“My first message is that this journey on sustainable finance, climate finance, has been a challenging one, but also source of innovation of AFD,” she said during the 6th Forum on Strategies for Transition to Green Economy Forum.
She referred to Egypt as an example of sustainable finance, noting that “Here in Egypt, we worked for the very first time with the Green Climate Fund in Egypt on a landmark program that we call TFSC; transforming Financial Systems for Climate.”
“We work both with public and private banks to finance climate projects in Egypt,” she said.
“Four years after signing the project, we already have 75% of the funds that have been disbursed, that have been sent into the real economy, 85% of projects contributing to mitigation targets, concretely avoiding emissions and 15% to adaptation,” she added.
She highlighted that this had a very concrete impact in terms of CO2 emissions avoided as well as in terms of jobs with over 1,500 jobs created.
She noted that the AFD should work with banking partners on the bankability of projects that contribute to adaptation, but also on the way that banks look at these projects, on the credit risk process, on the taxonomy, on creating the right incentives for these projects that have the reputation of being harder to finance.
She asserted that “when we talk about sustainable finance, we should not be limited to renewable energy projects…or reducing carbon emissions.”
She added that “We have to create the right regulatory framework, the right incentives and the right financial products to target not just mitigation, but adaptation projects, to target not just climate, but biodiversity projects, and more globally to make sure that we target sustainable social and economic development.”
She underlined that “I really think the next frontier actually in terms of sustainable finance is SDG-aligned finance.”
She highlighted having the first of its kind credit-line of SDG-aligned finance in Egypt.
Meanwhile, Emad Hassan, Manager of Green Economy Financing Facility (GEFF) at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), expounded how sustainable finance is linked to carbon market.
He noted that there are different mechanisms for finance, including the EBRD which seeks financing green projects.
He expounded how to choose a green project as this needs taking into account several issues, including technical considerations for selection; and who is in charge to extend the finance to the bodies concerned, including banks, etc.
Finally, he commended the convocation of the 6th Green Economy Forum in which he had the honor to participate three or four times.
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