Scaling Climate Action by Lowering Emissions (SCALE) is a trust-funded umbrella partnership designed to support countries accelerate their low-carbon development by mobilizing affordable finance. It both facilitates the delivery of direct climate finance and supports countries to overcome barriers in accessing funding via carbon markets, including from private sector actors.
Leveraging over two decades of World Bank expertise, SCALE provides high-impact concessional finance to support countries to generate and transact high-integrity, socially inclusive carbon credits. This support further facilitates their access to international carbon markets and the affordable finance available for achieving domestic climate targets.
Becoming operational in late 2023 with initial funding from the United States, SCALE is gearing up to provide support for up to 20 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
SCALE delivers support through a variety of approaches:
Financing the generation of high-integrity carbon credits. SCALE sets standards and provides countries with capacity building and technical assistance (TA) to apply them to programs. Together with price-floors embedded in the results-based climate finance agreements, this incentivizes action and guarantees payment upon achieving results, empowering countries with the option to sell on carbon markets or exercise the price-floor guarantee for the best possible returns.
Supporting countries in building the operational infrastructure and experience required to generate and transact in carbon markets while setting effective incentives for mitigating and reducing risks within emerging carbon markets, enabling further replication.
Crowding in private sector finance by simplifying access to carbon markets, bridging the gap between supply and demand, and collaborating with carbon buyer aggregators, such as the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA), to boost impactful climate financing.
People and communities are at the heart of all programs under the SCALE partnership. SCALE will ensure the inclusion of marginalized communities and indigenous peoples in all programs under the partnership through specially designed benefit-sharing arrangements supported by the Enhancing Access to Benefits while Lowering Emissions (EnABLE) trust fund.
SCALE is structured across three pillars; each designed to amplify and increase the climate ambition of projects to generate carbon credits that can be monetized:
Pillar I-Natural Climate Solutions: Actions to protect, sustainably manage, or restore natural ecosystems with the primary aim of helping to address climate change; these include investments in forests and sustainable landscapes, low emissions agriculture, and sequestration of blue carbon in coastal and marine ecosystems.
Pillar II-Sustainable Infrastructure Solutions: Transformations that include deep decarbonization of the power sector; modal shift and electrification in transport; emission reduction efforts in industries, waste management, and water supply; among others.
Pillar III-Fiscal and Financial Solutions: Strategic policy changes in fiscal sectors and greening financial sectors to catalyze additional climate finance via fossil fuel subsidy reform, sustainability-linked finance, and enabling local financial intermediaries.
SCALE will build on the success of its predecessor funds piloting this work including the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (ISFL), Carbon Initiative for Development (Ci-Dev), and Transformative Carbon Asset Facility (TCAF) to broaden and deepen the impact of climate and carbon finance. It offers a strategic, well-supported pathway for countries to access climate finance and leverage carbon markets for climate and developmental benefits, promising a future where environmental sustainability and economic growth go hand in hand.
