Green Finance Guide
The Green Finance Guide provides cities with a comprehensive overview of financial instruments and mechanisms across various sectors and stages of project development to support sustainable urban projects. Its objective is to help municipalities navigate green funding options, ensuring they can access, combine and apply innovative financing solutions for effective climate action.
It is designed to:
- Inform municipalities about a wide range of available financial instruments
- Offer high-level guidance on how to blend or sequence these instruments
- Highlight key stakeholders involved in the provision of climate finance
- Showcase real-world examples of how instruments have been successfully applied
- Provide access to relevant financing and technical assistance programmes across Europe
The tool is organised into a series of modules:
- Core modules (Financial Instruments, Case Studies, Financing & Technical Assistance Programmes) are structured as searchable databases that allow users to filter, identify and explore options relevant to their context.
- Complementary modules provide high-level guidance and explanatory support, helping users understand how to navigate the broader climate finance landscape, structure appropriate financing approaches for their local context and engage with relevant stakeholders throughout the funding process.
Together, these modules aim to either support early-stage project planning or upscaling by helping cities identify appropriate financing strategies, key stakeholders and programmes and draw insights from real-world examples.
Expected outcomes:
- Cities become more familiar with green finance options and their applications
- Improved access to a wide range of green financial instruments
- Greater capacity for cities to fund and implement sustainable projects across multiple sectors
- Municipalities develop investor-ready green project pipelines
- Enhanced ability to tailor financial strategies to specific project needs
Understanding the Green Finance Guide
Municipalities often rely heavily on traditional financial instruments due to:
- Limited knowledge of innovative finance mechanisms
- Administrative constraints in coordinating green finance strategies
- Challenges in public-private collaboration for urban sustainability investments
The Green Finance Guide is particularly useful to:
- Evaluate feasibility and impact – Identifying financing sources for pilot projects
- UP-SCALING – Securing funding for expanding successful interventions
Who can use the Green Finance Guide?
- City financial departments, to identify the best green financing options.
- Urban planners and policymakers, to align financial instruments with sustainability goals.
- Project developers, to structure investor-ready green projects.
Expertise requirements
The use of the tool requires the user to have:
- Basic knowledge of green finance, to be able to navigate through the categories and instruments
- An understanding of project financial needs and urban sustainability objectives, to be able to adjust the necessary filters
Green Finance Guide and the 5UP Approach
The Green Finance Guide is essential in the early planning stages of urban projects. It enables cities to:
- UP-DATING – Identify available funding opportunities for green projects
- UP-SCALING – Secure financial support for expanding climate initiatives
At both the pilot and upscaling phases, the guide provides insights into project readiness levels, investment risks and financial structuring strategies.
Click on this link to learn more about the 5UP Approach.
Guide: How to use the Green Finance Guide
You can access the guide on how to use the Green Finance Guide here.