At the CFFactory in Berlin last November, Clean Energy Works was invited by C40 Cities Finance Facility (CFF) to present on PAYS for Clean Transport and the analysis undertaken in 2018 by the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance.
The aim of the event was to share the CFF’s approach and experiences with those working in the field of project preparation and financing and to promote cooperation between cities, financiers and other stakeholders in this field.
As part of the reverse pitching sessions, Dr. Holmes Hummel discussed how PAYS addresses barriers to achieving scale in deploying electric buses, vastly reducing the reliance on subsidies and grants to finance the higher upfront costs. Scaling up to electric transit buses in all developing country cities could save over 57 million tons of CO2 emissions per year, and represent a US$ 25 billion annual investment opportunity for transit buses, growing further as PAYS expands to other vehicle types.
Cities are eager to transform their buses to zero-emission bus fleets and have reached out to CFF to help make that happen. But with requests for technical assistance being oversubscribed, new financing approaches, like PAYS for Clean Transport, are needed too. Cities have the opportunity to work in ways that can deploy much larger amounts of money than they think is possible.
