Sector Specialist in Urban Transport, Consultant

OBJECTIVE

The Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (CCFLA) is seeking to hire a senior sector expert in urban transport and climate finance to contribute to the report “State of Cities Climate Finance 2024,” that is being co-produced by CCFLA and other partners.

SELECTION CRITERIA

The sector expert should have strong professional experience in transport, urban transport, green, active transport as well as climate finance or a related field.

• Master’s degree or equivalent in finance, climate finance, political science, economics, sustainable development, urban planning, public administration or relevant subject.
• Excellent writing and speaking language skills in English are mandatory.
• At least 10 years of professional experience with the transport sector in sustainable finance, preferably with a strong focus on urban transport planning and finance.
• Strong analytical skills and working experience with concise writing and publications in this field.
• Previous experience advising governments or donors on planning and finance for transportation investments; or working with multilateral institutions such as the World Bank or coalitions such as CCFLA would be a plus.
• The consultant must be deadline oriented and able to work under pressure.

PROPOSAL REQUIREMENTS

Proposals for this bid are due October 6, 2023. Proposals should be submitted by applying directly.

The bidder is required to describe the key processes and timeline for the services for which it is responsible and key aspects of the assignment in no more than 3 pages. There should be clear intermediate milestones, including the delivery of a detailed outline by the middle of December and a draft report by January 15th.

DURATION

The duration of the contract is up to 65 working days. This assignment is expected to be completed by January 31, 2024, with the bulk of the work in November-January.

BACKGROUND

The Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (CCFLA) is the only multi-level and multi-stakeholder coalition aimed at closing the investment gap for urban climate projects worldwide. Launched at the United Nations Secretary-General’s Climate Summit in September 2014, CCFLA has successfully provided an efficient platform and convening space, gathering the relevant actors dedicated to urban development, climate action, and/or financing, and providing knowledge and understanding to these various actors. Its members represent many of the world’s largest city and subnational networks, major public and private financial institutions, governments, and international organizations.

The need for urgent climate action is greater than ever, and the investment needed in low-carbon infrastructure is still far from enough. Therefore, there is a clear demand to call attention to the challenges and opportunities for cities in accessing climate finance. The 2021 State of Cities Climate Finance Report (SCCFR21) was the first endeavor to examine the current state of urban climate investment, the barriers to reaching the needed investment levels, and the steps to overcoming these challenges. Produced by CCFLA in partnership with the World Bank and the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, the 2021 SCCFR contributed to CCFLA’s mission to mobilize city level climate finance at scale by 2030 and became the most important global publication providing a comprehensive estimate of global urban climate finance. It was cited and referred to by key publications, including the IPCC’s Working Groups II[1] and III[2] contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report on Climate Change.

Building on this momentum, CCFLA aims to produce the 2024 State of Cities Climate Finance Report. It will build on the 2021 report, update the data, and address key structural constraints to scaling-up climate finance. The report will be launched at the 2024 World Urban Forum.

The overarching objective of the Report is to provide actionable information to facilitate the scaling-up of climate finance in cities, contributing to CCFLA’s goal of mobilizing finance for city-level climate action at scale by 2030. The report aims at:

1. Providing an update from the 2021 SCCFR tracking framework of urban climate finance flows, by analyzing the 2021-2022 data on the current state of urban climate finance flows for both mitigation and adaptation.
2. Supporting members and CCFLA’s advocacy efforts on showcasing the needs to increase urban climate finance and use these numbers to spotlight cities in international climate finance negotiations.
3. Having clear recommendations on what should be prioritized to close the urban investment gap by understanding which source/sectors/regions we need to focus on and what solutions will work in which contexts.

The work of this Terms of Reference pertains to Scope of Work 1: Provide an update from the 2021 SCCFR tracking framework of urban climate finance flows, and Scope of Work 2: Showcase the needs to increase urban climate finance. The goal of this chapter is to implement the 2021 SCCFR taxonomy, methods and framework to track donors’ and financiers’ sources, magnitude, and destination of urban climate finance flows.

The report intends to make a bottom-up estimate, with the available project-level data of climate finance flows (based on CPI Global Landscape for Climate Finance) and identify emerging trends or patterns of investment flows in terms of region, income level, or other metrics.

As such the Report will address the following methodological activities, that will be led by the CPI/CCFLA team, in which the work of the consultant will be incorporated (see items 2 and 3):

1. Bottom-up project finance tracking: this will mainly consist of applying a keyword search to Climate Policy Initiative’s Global Landscape of Climate Finance database[1] to capture the urban components of the global climate finance commitments data. This is to be complemented by project-level data from CDP Cities, Climate Bonds Initiative, and surveys to Development Finance Institutions.
2. Update the estimate for sector-level capital expenditure in urban transport: reported project-level commitment data has a large amount of data gaps, particularly related to private and domestic public flows. The report aims to update and improve the capital expenditure data exercise for transport by including general figures on investment, paired with assumptions to downscale this expenditure to the urban level; transport estimates include, for example, the number of additional electric buses multiplied by conservative unit costs.
3. Needs assessment: estimate a global amount (aggregate estimate) of how much finance is needed, considering the 1.5C scenario: the report aims to model an estimation based on current global databases of how much finance is needed at the local level. The modelling would use and be supported by current databases such as the CDP-ICLEI unified reporting system. The needs assessment may include a specific exercise for estimating transport needs.

SCOPE OF WORK

The overall task of the Sector Specialist in Urban Transport (“Consultant”) is to perform a deep-dive analysis, data collection and scoping of investments in sustainable urban transport, a sector for which significant financial data gaps currently persist.

Based on the following definition of urban climate finance:

Resources directed to activities limiting city-induced GHG emissions or aiming to address climate-related risks faced by cities, contributing to urban low carbon development or resilience.

• For urban climate mitigation, this covers projects contributing to reducing or avoiding GHG emissions from sources located strictly within the city boundary, or for those produced as a consequence of activities occurring in the city exclusively.
• For urban climate adaptation, this covers projects that aim at maintaining or increasing the adaptive capacity and resilience of cities, in response to climate-related risks affecting the city directly.

The Consultant will explore and define how this can be applied for the urban transport sector. Using this knowledge, the Consultant will:

1. Refine and implement urban transport taxonomy defined for the 2021 State of Cities Climate Finance Report (SCCFR21) to classify sector activities that qualify as urban climate finance;
2. Update and add to CCFLA’s existing repository of studies and databases that capture primary investment in sustainable urban transport activities, both public and private;
3. Identify data gaps in the existing studies/databases;
4. Update SCCFR21’s relevant sector-level proxies of urban climate finance investment in the sector considering 2021-2022 investment data;
5. Implement and refine CCFLA’s methodology to formulate a statistical estimate of urban climate finance investment in the sector, at a global or regional scale.
6. Provide inputs on urban transport to other chapters of the report as needed, e.g. needs assessment.

DELIVERABLES

More specifically, the following deliverables are expected from the Consultant:

1. A review and contribution to the final urban climate finance activity taxonomy for the transport sector, building off of the previous SCCFR21 transport work. This may include any updates to the definition of urban climate finance activities for the sector.

2. A review and mapping of the most recent literature estimating investment, preferably climate-related, in the sector;

3. A review of existing statistical proxy methodologies (OECD, I4CE, IEA and others);

4. An identification of relevant proxies and collection of data, and elaboration of sector methodology;

5. The physical output of this work will be the drafting of the chapter sub-section of 4-5 pages:

   1. Outlining the inclusion rules (including comments on specific sectorial challenges);

   2. Presentation of the chosen proxy or proxies, with brief explanation of methodology;

   3. Presentation and analysis of the resulting data (two/three graphs and commentary);

   4. Final recommendations for future tracking work.

6. The sector expert will also provide write ups on urban transport related inputs for other chapters of the report, namely, needs assessment, enabling conditions and conclusions as needed.

TERMS OF ASSIGNMENT

Reporting: The Consultant will report directly to the Project Manager of the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance.

Location & Travel: The Consultant is expected to be available for audio and video conferences with the CCFLA team as required.

[1]https://www.ipcc.ch/working-group/wg2/

[2] https://www.ipcc.ch/working-group/wg3/

[3] Data sources of the Global Landscape of Climate Finance include Bloomberg New Energy Finance, OECD DAC, Climate Funds Update, IJ Global. This is to be complemented by data from CDP Cities, Climate Bonds Initiative, surveys, and other sources.