Climate change presents a risk to the global economy and consequently the finance sector. However, it also presents an opportunity for innovative financing to increase the economic and social resilience to climate impacts.
As facilitators of the economy, financial institutions have a central role in the transformation to low carbon and climate-resilient development. Their responsibility is twofold: greening their portfolios towards Paris compatible financing and investments, and reflecting and integrating climate-related risks into their risk management processes. This gradual process involves harmonising short-term business cycles and investment horizons with systemic and long-term thinking by all actors from the financial sector (e.g. banks, asset managers, insurers, pension funds, investment consultants, regulators, rating agencies). This process is supported by public actors who moderate the structural change required for a transition to climate-resilient economies.
This course provides the basics of finance and investment for assessing the financial viability of investments in adaptation projects. It clusters business models to provide an understanding of the parameters according to the project scale and, for example, revenue models, ownership structure, and value proposition, and will link to the financing perspective. Different investors and intermediaries have very different investment strategies, level of risk appetite, return expectations, and investment horizons. Crowding in the right investor for a project is essential to ensure their long-term involvement and the required scale-up of investment volumes.
What Do We Offer?
Tuition Fees*
| Registration Date | Fee |
| Before Jul 15, 2023 | EUR 1,485 |
| After Jul 15, 2023 | EUR 1,700 |
Final exam fee: An additional final exam fee will be charged for the second and third final exam attempt
Discounts:
Payment in instalments is unfortunately not possible.
*Subject to change
Target Audience
This course is suitable for both public and private sector practitioners, including entrepreneurs, project developers, private investors, initiator/fund houses, international development finance consultants and managers, plant operators and manufacturers, engineers and advisory professionals (e.g. law firms, business, and tax consultants). The course aims to explain the many facets of, and perspectives on, climate adaptation finance. Experience and basic knowledge in (mainstream) banking and finance is therefore very helpful but not explicitly required.
Workload
The course takes 6 months assuming 5-7 hours of self-study per week. It consists of 9 units, which build upon each other. You will take the units in sequence and will need to pass an online multiple-choice test before accessing the next unit. The last unit includes a case study assignment that has to be submitted on a fixed deadline. You are not sure if you manage to complete the course within 6 months? No worries! You can apply for a course extension (6 more months) against an administrative fee.
Dates
| Course Start | Course End | Registration | Early Bird |
| Sept. 1 | Feb. 28 | Jun. 1 - Sept. 1 | by Jul. 15 |
| Mar. 1 | Aug. 31 | Dec. 1 - Mar. 1 | by Jan. 15 |
All our courses contribute to the following SDGs
This course will enhance your knowledge in the following SDGs. The SWA offers professional and executive courses dedicated to the advancement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Registrations are now open. Register before 15 July 2023 and benefit from our early bird discount.
Course Objectives
Adaptation seeks to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. Most of the research on adaptation to date has focused on public spending on adaptation rather than private adaptation, although it may be likely that most of the adaptation financing needs appear with the private actors affected by climate change. Understanding this will help to moderate and potentially accelerate adaptation, as well as address the role of government incentives for adaptation projects. This course will demonstrate that adaptation can appear with different economic and financial characteristics depending on the level we look at it and the individual activity that is considered. Depending on these different characteristics there are different roles for private and commercial actors or governmental institutions in facilitating the structural change towards a low carbon and climate-resilient economy.
Suggestions & Recommendations
This course is designed so that you have the flexibility to decide on the timing and pace of your learning experience. However we will provide you with recommendations for your to take as much as possible from this course.
Your schedule: We will provide you a course schedule including voluntary and mandatory deadlines. The course schedule serves as a guideline for your personal learning schedule and will help you to complete the programme within the given time frame.
Exercises: Even though the exercises in the script are not mandatory we strongly advise that you use them as an opportunity to check your knowledge and to prepare for the final exam.
Networking Opportunities: Use the forum to introduce yourself to your peer participants and to start interesting discussions.
Unit 1: Climate change science – What is adaptation?
This introductory unit will present the science behind climate change and its physical impact, before moving on to discuss the impact of climate change on the economy. It will explore economies need to adapt, addressing the question “what is climate adaptation”, providing the macro perspective of adaptation (UNFCCC definition of adaptation) before moving to the micro perspective of adaptation (what do economies/actors do to adapt?)
Unit 3: Coping with damages – the natural role of private and public sector actors
This Unit will provide an introductory overview of the natural roles of actors, presenting the interactions between private and public stakeholders, providing the basis for further analysis into adaptation finance. Private actors must consider how business decisions will change in a changing environment, while public actors must decide how to moderate this structural change (e.g. providing policies, support, information, etc.). The Unit will also introduce the different types of investors and financial intermediaries and an understanding of their decision-making criteria and processes, to answer the overarching question: Why are companies investing in climate and sustainability?.
Unit 5: Barriers to adaptation finance and the role of support frameworks
This Unit explores why markets alone might fundamentally not be able to trigger adaptation investment in a way necessary to mitigate climate change. It introduces market imperfections, or barriers, which may systematically keep adaptation projects from materialising. Once these barriers have been identified, there are a variety of options to tackle or overcome them, leading to efficient market outcomes. This guides you on how public finance or policy can facilitate private financial flows towards adaptation.
Unit 7: Investment opportunities from the perspective of private financiers
This Unit will provide an overview of what sources of financing are available to finance adaptation business models, building on those analysed in Unit 6. It will link to the overview of financing structures given in Unit 4 and build up knowledge on investment opportunities from the perspective of private financiers, answering the question: who invests in these (adaptation) business models and how?
Unit 9: Climate resilience and risk metrics and indicators
This Unit explores climate risks and resilience metrics, looking at how to define metrics that are measurable, computable and comparable, which include both mean and variability, recent past, current trends, and projection of risks. Possible indicators to measure climate finance potential include financial and impact-driven ones. A very restricted focus on monetary indicators might not create the right incentives to support a mix of projects contributing to transformational change. This Unit will also explore the measurement and disclosure of climate risk as to the first step to developing strategies to address risk as part of all investment decisions.
Unit 2: Climate science meets climate finance
The Unit will provide an overview of the climate finance landscape to understand the importance and relevance of adaptation and climate resilience in terms of scale and contribution to climate finance. The Unit will explore the main building blocks of international adaptation-related policies, looking particularly at the Paris Agreement to anchor the role of the public sector and public support instruments and policies later in the course.
Unit 4: Basics of finance and investment with a business model perspective on climate-resilient projects
This Unit will shift the focus towards the level of climate investments. Participants will gain a methodological understanding of financing at the project level, including how to assess the financial viability of an investment. There are crucial tools necessary to do this, and this unit will provide the basics of business models, finance, and investment, with a focus on investment calculations (including key terms, typical KPIs) and key specifics of business cases, with a reference to climate adaptation.
Unit 6: Building a business case for adaptation
In the previous Units, we explore the broader context and regulatory frameworks surrounding adaptation/climate resilient projects. This Unit will narrow the focus, introducing the process of analysing new adaptation business model, or adjusting existing business models, to increase the climate resilience of their portfolio.
Part I will first introduce the rationale for a private actor to invest, building on Unit 4 and will then provide a deep-dive into understanding adaptation business models and the proposition behind them, what kind of business models we observe in adaptation/climate resilience, the investors and the type of financial instruments used.
Part II will provide an overview of the broad variety of adaptation business cases, analysing a selection of case studies on different adaptation/climate resilient projects to conduct an in-depth analysis of their characteristics. In this way, we will build a business case from the perspective of a project developer.
Unit 8: Financing the business model – financial instruments
Following on from sources of finance, this Unit will focus on instruments available to private actors to invest in climate adaptation activities, including ‘innovative’ instruments and blended finance.
Sample Material
*Subject to change
The flexibility of our courses offers you the opportunity to follow your own schedule and to combine daily work with professional development.
The high quality offered will immediately improve your daily job performance as well as the performance of your institution.
Training Material
Video Lectures
Online Tests
Each unit ends with an online test comprising a set of 10 - 15 multiple choice questions. Only after having successfully completed an online test you will gain access to the next unit.
Reading Material
A PDF script is for most of our courses the main studying material. This reading material provides basic concepts and principles applicable to the subject of each unit.
Assignments
The key to successful learning is the immediate use of newly acquired knowledge and the transfer of theory into practice. Our online courses are therefore supplemented by mandatory assignments.
Discussion Forum
A course discussion forum enables the interaction between participants and trainers and facilitates the exchange of experiences as well as possibilities to ask questions or get clarifications.
Final Exam
Passing a final examination is a requirement for obtaining your certificate.
If you do not wish to take the final exam, you will receive a confirmation of course participation after completing the course.
Dr. Christine Grüning
Dr. Christine Grüning delivers a strong interdisciplinary background in environmental economics, finance and policy. Since 2011 she is managing and implementing applied research, education and capacity building projects for the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance. Read more...
Prof. Dr. Ulf Moslener
Ulf Moslener is Professor for Sustainable Energy Finance at the faculty of Frankfurt School. As Head of Research at the Centre his current fields of research are the economics of climate change, financing sustainable energy systems and climate finance. More...
The content of this course was developed by the Frankfurt School - UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance (http://fs-unep-centre.org/). The Centre is a strategic cooperation between Frankfurt School and the UN Environment programme. Its vision is to advance transformation to resilient low-carbon and resource-efficient economies by attracting new types of investors, in particular catalysing the financing of clean energy by the private sector. The Centre is UNEP’s major knowledge hub for climate finance related aspects.
Master of Leadership in Sustainable Finance
The Certified Expert in Climate Adaptation Finance is an Elective Module of the Master of Leadership in Sustainable Finance - online. Join our Master programme after completing the CECAF course and waive one elective module. Also, the amount you paid for the course will be deducted from the final tuition fee of the Master programme.
Diploma in Green Finance
The Certified Expert in Climate Adaptation Finance Finance is part of the curriculum of our Diploma in Green Finance. Enroll in our Diploma after completing the CECAF course and waive one module. Also, the amount you paid for the course will be deducted from the final tuition fee of the Diploma.
Aleksandra Przybylska
Programme Assistant
