2025 Reports

Climate Creditors: How Credit Ratings Widen the Investment Gap in Climate Finance Access

Leffel, Benjamin

The rising trend of debt-based climate finance provides a prism through which to view the severity of the capital access divide across the globe. While this gap is often described as one between the Global North and Global South, the discussion below builds on city-level data on urban climate loans from European Investment Bank and green bonds data from the Climate Bonds Initiative to explore the relationship between credit rating and the investment gap.