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Nordic Climate Facility

The Nordic Climate Facility (NCF), financed and managed by the Nordic Development Fund (NDF), is a challenge fund that finances early stage climate change projects in developing countries. NCF aims to build a portfolio of innovative business concepts which have been tested, proved viable, and are ready to be scaled-up and replicated.

Support provider

Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden

Purpose of support

Scoping and project preparation

Project and program implementation

Eligible countries and regions

Projects should be implemented through partnerships between Nordic and local partners in an eligible NCF country. Eligible applicants must be registered legal entities at the time of the concept note submission.

Eligibility criteria

The NCF finances projects that are climate relevant, innovative, business focused, and contribute towards the SDGs.

Strong project proposals have the following features:

the aim to build prosperity and reduce poverty;
the aim to increase gender equality;
realistic and clear outputs and outcomes;
strong replication and scaling-up potential;
convincing justification(s) for why NCF grant funding is needed;
alignment with national development and climate change plans, strategies and policies in
the country of implementation.

Financial instruments

Grants

Co-financing requirements (if applicable)

The project partners must mobilise co-financing equal to at least 25% of the requested NCF grant as loan, equity and/or grant. Of that amount, the Nordic partner(s) must provide at least 10% as loan or equity, and the local partner(s) must provide at least 5% as loan, equity and or grant. The remaining 10% can be freely distributed between the project partners and other financiers.

Decision-making information

NCF is financed and managed by the Nordic Development Fund (NDF)

Monitoring and reporting procedures

NDF will monitor whether the project is on track to achieve its expected outcomes and outputs within the agreed budget. Progress and financial reports will serve as a basis for NDF's monitoring.

On the facility level, NDF will monitor progress against NCF's key development indicators:

Number of beneficiaries reached
Number of people with increased resilience to climate change
Tonnes of CO2e emissions reductions
Number of green business concepts tested
Number of new decent jobs created
Number of people with improved livelihoods/income-generative possibilities
Number of multi-stakeholder partnerships developed
Amount of funds leveraged

Steps to access

The application process consists of two stages; stage 1 involves submitting a concept note and stage 2, which is only for selected applicants, involves a full proposal.

To fill out the concept note, applicants must register to the SmartME online application system, find the concept note application template, prepare a concept note, and submit it. After submission, eligible applications are scored by the evaluation committee and the highest scoring concept notes are given comments and are selected to submit a full proposal.

The full proposal template can be accessed on the SmartME online application system. Once submitted, all eligible full proposals are scored by the evaluation committee and the highest scoring full proposals are selected for due diligence interviews. Once project specific comments are shared, contract negotiations with shortlisted applicants can begin.

Climate objective

Adaptation, Mitigation, Cross-cutting

Sectors and themes

Agriculture, Ecosystem adaptation, Education, Energy efficiency, Forestry and Land-Use, Industry and Infrastructure, Renewable Energy, Rural, Transportation, Urban, Waste management, Oceans and Coastal Resources, Disaster risk reduction, Health, Gender, Jobs and Livelihoods, Poverty, Water

Type of support provider

Multilateral

Type of recipient

Private sector, Non-profit or civil society organization, International organization

Fund size

EUR 57 million

Co-financing required

Yes

Application timeframe

The next application period is between 5 June and 5 September 2019. The theme for this year's call for proposals is Testing the viability of innovative climate solutions. The application guidelines are available here.

Trustee or administrator

Nordic Development Fund

Contact information

https://www.nordicclimatefacility.com/#

nordicclimatefacility@ndf.fi

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