EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Limiting global warmingto below 2°C above pre-industrial levels will require massive reductions ingreenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from business-as-usual?on the order of 40percent to 70 percent in 2050 compared to 2010, and near net zero emissions by2100. At the same time, new investments will be needed to shift the world to alow-carbon economy. Responding to the scale of the climate change challengewill require a fundamental transformation in our political, economic, energy,and socio-technical systems. This working paper examines how climate financecan be transformational by gleaning insights from nine lowcarbon energy casestudies, selected to cover a variety of geographies, energy sources, anddegrees of transformation. We provide a series of recommendations fordevelopment finance institutions/contributor governments and recipientgovernments on how to catalyze transformational change, and a planning frameworkthat lays out a sequence of steps for recipient governments.