Transition Finance Initiative of the Year

Description

This award is open to organisations that have developed an innovative approach to transition finance for hard-to-abate sectors – that is, finance designed to shift capital from unsustainable to sustainable activities, enabling and accelerating the pathways for these challenging sectors to shift to low-carbon, nature-positive alternatives. This award recognises the barriers to the urgent shift of capital required, especially in sectors where low-carbon technologies or nature-positive solutions are currently inadequately developed or expensive. The judges are looking for innovative ways in which the transition is being incentivised, in the absence of market drivers. The types of transition finance activities eligible for this award might include: developing transition finance instruments; constructing portfolios that support the technologies that will be required to enable the transition in hard-to-abate sectors such as cement, aviation and steel; investing in research in these sectors; or establishing science-based timeframes for transition for investments across all sectors.  If the initiative is for a part of the financial organisation’s own activities, then that organisation’s wider activities should not be misaligned with sustainable outcomes. 

Judges do not expect perfection in all aspects of the activities of the financial institution that is working on transition finance: they know that embedding sustainable finance across all activities is a challenging process! But the judges expect evidence that the financial institution takes appropriate account of social and environmental issues across all of its activities and has a transition plan that applies across its portfolio.

The strategy will have been developed between 2022 and 2024.

The judges will assess the objectives and achievements of the transition finance initiative and must see evidence of how it has the potential to change capital allocation; and the degree of creativity and innovation that has been shown in taking forward the initiative.

Criteria

Judges will be looking for evidence of progress on the following points (weighting percentages in brackets):

  • How the initiative is designed to deliver meaningful change and real world impact in a sector or sectors that are particularly challenging to change (30%)

  • Evidence of its success with verifiable data to support reach and impact (30%)

  • Effectiveness of systems put in place to ensure the continuity of the initiative, including adaptation and learning (30%)

  • The extent to which it has also influenced practices outside the organisation (10%)

Any confidential data will be treated as such and only shared with the judging panel, all of whom will have signed NDAs.