This Technical Note is part of International Climate Finance within Finance. Reach out to Hayden Higgins for more information.

Climate finance is a vital element of the negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In 2009, through the Copenhagen Accord, developed countries pledged to mobilize US$100 billion annually in climate finance for developing nations by 2020, a goal that was later extended through 2025. In 2023, at COP28 in Dubai, countries established a loss and damage fund to support developing countries. At COP29, countries are supposed to agree on a new finance goal that will replace the US$100 billion commitment to support developing countries' climate action needs and priorities.

The global finance gap for climate transition is widening. According to data from the Climate Policy Initiative, the annual climate finance needed through 2030 increases steadily from $8.1 to $9 trillion before surging to over $10 trillion annually from 2031 to 2050. This marks at least a sixfold increase from the US$1.3 trillion annual climate finance flows between 2021 and 2022. Emerging markets and developing countries (excluding China) may need around $2.4 trillion annually by 2030 in external finance for mitigation and adaptation to meet climate and nature goals. Developing country nationally determined contributions list nearly $6 trillion in needs between 2020 and 2030. Securing sustained climate finance is crucial to increasing and maintaining climate action implementation.

The Climate Finance Calculator provides scenarios that allow users to compare countries' climate finance shares based on their emissions levels and economic status. The climate finance shares are the indicative minimum threshold of what a country could contribute toward the selected finance target, depending on its responsibility and capability to pay, measured by its historical emissions and income, respectively. The calculator aims to inform UNFCCC climate finance negotiations around, for example, the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) and the capitalization and replenishment of the loss and damage fund and the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

This technical note describes the data sources and methods used to calculate the climate finance shares for each country based on selected indicators and addresses the limitations of the Climate Finance Calculator.

_{Preview image by Amira Grotendiek / UNclimatechange / Flickr}