South Pole Group’s director of strategy Ingo Puhl explains the rationale behind the Matchmaker project: “Infrastructure under the control of cities is responsible for 70 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions but only 4 per cent of cities have access to the capital that needs to be invested to transition into the low-carbon economy. Our object is to increase this access.”
The project was launched by Low Carbon City Lab (LoCal) and is led by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and ICLEI. Its goal is to bring together cities and investors to explore barriers and solutions to the financing of low-carbon city projects. At the meeting in Washington, Puhl presented core metrics as a means to define suitable measures to reduce CO2.
As part of the workshop, representatives from four cities – Belo Horizonte, Recife, Medellin and Santa Monica – presented on concrete projects to reduce emissions in their cities. These include building efficiency and transport projects such as bus rapid transit and bike sharing.
In the discussions that followed with public and private sector investors, it was made clear that the Matchmaker project should not limit itself to connecting city representatives and investors. The initiative should act as a facilitator to help cities prioritise concrete climate action projects that can be marketed to capital providers.