New Carbon Finance Platform Announced At COP28

The US Department of State, the Bezos Earth Fund, and The Rockefeller Foundation presented the core framework of the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA), a carbon finance platform aimed at catalyzing private capital to support energy transition strategies in developing and emerging economies. At the launch event at the US Center at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), the three ETA partners announced several major achievements since their partnership’s creation at COP27 one year ago and their aim to formally establish the ETA as an independent initiative by Earth Day 2024.

The ETA will bring together governments and private sector stakeholders employing carbon crediting to deliver faster, deeper greenhouse gas reductions by accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean power in developing and emerging economies. Based on preliminary estimates, the ETA could mobilize from US$72 billion to US$207 billion in transition finance by 2035. The ETA is pioneering a sectoral-scale crediting approach that will incentivize participating countries to intensify their near-term activities contributing to power sector decarbonization. This includes deploying and using clean power, retiring fossil fuel assets, enhancing storage capacity, transmission, and distribution, and needed policy shifts.

The core framework serves as a foundation for the creation of the ETA Coalition. It describes the coalition and its objectives and provides an overview of key elements of the ETA:

• Its approach to carbon crediting, including the development of an independent sectoral-scale crediting standard for emissions reductions from electricity generation;
• Criteria for participating companies and information on how they would use ETA carbon credits to help meet their voluntary climate commitments;
• Just transition provisions to address worker and community needs; plans to dedicate a portion of the finance generated to address adaptation and resilience in vulnerable countries; and options for innovative financial structures to mobilize investment into energy transition strategies.

The partners were joined by countries and leading companies declaring their interest in engaging with the ETA partners in the continued development of the groundbreaking initiative. The governments of Chile, the Dominican Republic, and Nigeria announced they would be joining the ETA as pilot countries.

Nine companies signed a letter of interest welcoming the ETA as an opportunity to support large-scale power sector transformation while accelerating progress toward climate goals: Bank of America, Boston Consulting Group, Mastercard, McDonald’s, Morgan Stanley, PepsiCo, Salesforce, Standard Chartered Bank, and Schneider Electric.

The ETA partners received extensive input from a High-Level Consultative Group of more than 30 experts and intergovernmental, private sector, and civil society leaders from all regions of the world. They have been supported in the design effort by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), and the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ).