The Climate Stack: Leveraging Blended Finance for Global Climate Solutions in Agriculture and Renewable Energy
Blended finance is emerging as one of the most flexible and effective tools to mobilize capital for decarbonization and climate resilience. By strategically leveraging philanthropic, public, and private funding across the capital stack, blended finance can de-risk projects and open pathways for investment in both emerging markets and underserved domestic communities. This session will explore how catalytic capital can unlock and mobilize more traditional forms of capital to support the renewable energy transition and promote sustainable agriculture for improved climate resilience, particularly in harder-to-fund sectors and geographies. Panelists will discuss approaches and caveats to blended finance and showcase several examples of agriculture and energy funds that are currently scaling up, including:
Peace Renewable Energy Credit (P-REC) Aggregation Facility targeting off-grid energy for humanitarian and community electrification in conflict settings.
Tropical Resilience Fund (TREF) focused on scaling up one of the largest public-private partnerships, the Amazon Biodiversity Fund.
Regenerative Capital (ReCa) platform and Impact Acceleration Facility scaling investment and technical assistance for African farmers and agriculture export businesses.
Moderator
Christina Cairns – Former USAID Environment Foreign Service Officer and US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) Investment Manager
Panelists
Joe Dougherty – Partner, Dalberg Advisors
Katie Retz – Renewable Energy Finance Director, Energy Peace Partners
Carla Orrego, Senior Manager, Capital Mobilization – Climate Policy Initiative, Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance
Wendy Francesconi and Nick Oakes – Impact Earth/CGIAR
Sarah Wall and Anna Toness – Signature AgriInvestment, Regenerative Capital (ReCa) Fund
Julie Cheng – Private Sector Investment Specialist, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)