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Financing Climate Action

Local Tools to Move from Planning to Implementation

ICLEI USA is helping U.S. local governments, regions, and Tribal nations navigate a new implementation landscape. Public sector spending alone is not enough, and local entities will need every tool in the box to achieve sustainability and resilience goals. Local governments are strategically situated to catalyze climate investment. They have access to cheap capital, physical asset ownership, authority over development processes, and purchasing power –  abilities and roles that drive investments leading to energy affordability, community connectivity, and shared prosperity.

Local governments can serve as enablers of economic development. By working with private sector developers and financiers, local governments can unlock capital far beyond what they alone control. Investment in climate solutions is increasing, and ICLEI USA is here to share tools for leveraging public capital, increasing “climate-smart” private development, and doing so in ways that prioritize community benefits.

Explore By Topic

Local Government Toolkits

 

Through policies to ease private investment, tools and resources that reduce risk and costs, and specialized financial instruments, localities can drive public and private action towards decarbonization. ICLEI USA’s tools and programming can be used to develop a near-term action plan to accelerate private action.

 

Local Government Starter Guides

ICLEI USA’s Starter Guides are highly focused, sector-specific, action-oriented resources centered on the specific roles local governments can play in facilitating private investment in climate solutions, including clear sets of actions to help attract or enable private financing. These actions focus on core enabling conditions including policies, programs, market signals, partnerships, and risk-reduction measures. Starter Guides are not meant to be exhaustive technical manuals but instead help local governments understand where to intervene, what levers they control, how those levers can unlock private capital, and key immediate actions to begin with.

 

  • Residential Building Efficiency & Electrification Starter Guide
  • Commercial Building Efficiency & Electrification Starter Guide (Coming Summer 2026)
  • Distributed Solar & Storage Starter Guide (Coming Summer 2026)
  • Geothermal Energy Starter Guide (Coming Summer 2026)
  • Electric Vehicle Adoption Starter Guide (Coming Summer 2026)
  • Municipal Solid Waste Starter Guide (Coming Summer 2026)

 

Peer Learning Cohorts

Review recordings of mini-series designed for peer-to-peer and peer-to-practitioner interactions. Key learning objectives include understanding enabling policies that drive private investment, identifying tools and resources to reduce risk and costs, and clarifying which financial mechanisms fit the local context.

  • Building Energy Efficiency & Electrification
  • Distributed Solar & Storage
  • Geothermal Energy

 

Case Studies (Coming Summer 2026)

Learn from local governments that successfully implemented policies, programs, and financial tools to support their decarbonization goals.

 

Insights and Exchange Series 

These sectorally-focused webinars bring practical insights from real-wold practitioners to help local governments and stakeholders move from planning to action. Hear about successful policy, funding, and partnership projects and how to coordinate parties within government for shared success.

 

Municipal Finance

 

Municipal governments can increase their climate and sustainability impact through budgeting, purchasing, financing tools, and public-private partnerships. Explore the variety of revenue generation, lending, contracting, and budgetary allocation tools local governments have to directly fund and finance their climate change mitigation and adaptation projects.

 

Climate Aligned Budgeting

 

Make the most of available resources by tackling climate challenges through municipal climate budgeting.

 

Municipal Revenue and Financing White Papers

 

These papers take a close look at tools available to local governments to finance public and private sustainable infrastructure projects. Learn more about what the tools are, where they are available, and how a local government can use them.

 

  • Funding Fleet Electrification White Paper (Coming Summer 2026)
  • Power Purchase Agreements White Paper (Coming Summer 2026)
  • Tax Increment Financing White Paper (Coming Summer 2026)
  • Green and Sustainability Bonds White Paper (Coming Summer 2026)
  • Municipal Green Revolving Fund White Paper (Coming Summer 2026)
  • User Fees and Charges White Paper (Coming Summer 2026)
  • Accessing Green Banks to Fund Climate Action White Paper (Coming Summer 2026)
  • Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) White Paper (Coming Summer 2026)
  • Dedicated New Revenue Sources White Paper (Coming Summer 2026)
  • Energy Savings Performance Contracts White Paper (Coming Summer 2026)
  • Financing the Capture and Reduction of Fugitive Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Coming Summer 2026)

 

 

Adaptation & Resilience Finance

 

In addition to efforts to drive investments in the solutions needed to reduce the pollution contributing to climate change, local governments are also grappling with how to pay for the projects needed to protect their communities from increasing impacts from a changing climate. While the economic case for resilience is clear – every $1 invested today saves us up to $13 in future losses – the scale of investment needed to modernize aging infrastructure and protect communities from accelerating climate threats far outpaces what public grants and post-disaster recovery funds can deliver alone.

 

The Resilience Finance Guidebook (coming Summer 2026) from ICLEI USA and Duke University serves as a critical framework to help local governments fill this gap. Authored by ICLEI USA Board Member, Victoria Salinas (Climate Leader in Residence at Duke and former Deputy Administrator for Resilience at FEMA), this guide delivers a highly practical and applied framework for helping local governments systematically remove barriers to finance and structure their resilience projects in ways that can attract private investment.

 

 

Project Finance

 

Understanding how projects actually get financed is foundational to advancing climate investments and infrastructure more broadly. These introductory resources walk local governments through the fundamentals of development and project finance: how capital moves from shared priorities to funded deals, the concepts that shape green infrastructure investment, and how to make an effective case for support.

 

Introductions to Project Finance

 

The Capital Absorption Framework From Transaction to Transformation Webinar

An introduction to development finance and the Center for Community Investment’s Capital Absorption Framework – a process for turning shared priorities into an investment pipeline.

The Green Finance Gap Webinar
Introduces financial concepts behind sustainable infrastructure financing – risk and return, project finance, and the cost of capital – and who will pay for investments during the clean energy transition.

Using Policy to Grow Private Investment
How is a green infrastructure project financed and how do investors evaluate risk for different sectors, geographies, and business models? What are the main financial and non-financial barriers to delivery? This presentation will establish what is needed to increase investment in clean energy and manufacturing and show how policy can derisk investment to the point of “financial viability.” Case studies will draw on successes and failures from the U.S.

 

Asking for Support: Formulating the Ask. Making the Ask Webinar
An interactive training with the Center for Community Investment on making your pitch to politicians, funders, and other decision-makers. 

 

 

Municipal Investment Fund

 

From 2025 through 2026, ICLEI USA partnered with CGC to offer $11.5 million in market-building grants and technical support to help 49 communities – local governments, Tribes, and their partner not-for-profit organizations across 46 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and four Tribal nations –  develop public-private partnership plans that can accelerate the deployment of capital to clean energy projects. Grantees gained partners, tools, and frameworks that enable them to deploy clean energy projects in their communities to advance the creation of new jobs, affordable energy, clean air, and clean water.  

 

Learn more about the Municipal Investment Fund and the public-private partnership plans across our 49 awardee communities, including case studies on each community.

 

Learn more about ICLEI’s Municipal Investment Fund partner, CGC, the nation’s green bank. Learn more about their financing opportunities and submit a proposal directly.