IFC’s latest learning brief, “Clean Impact Bond: Mobilizing Finance for Clean Cooking,” showcases how IFC contributes to gender-smart climate action and inclusion at the base of the pyramid. This brief introduces the first-ever Clean Impact Bond (CIB), a results-based financing (RBF) instrument that is designed to mobilize finance for small and medium enterprises based on sales of certified health and gender credits in the modern energy cooking sector.
Main Findings
- Results-based financing can mobilize private finance from investors based on gender and health outcomes generated by a project.
- There is evidence that clean cooking can achieve measurable health and gender outcomes, which can be monetized in the same way that carbon credits are sold to willing buyers.
- Tradable and verifiable health and gender credits can be issued to generate additional cash flow for small and medium enterprises that manufacture and distribute clean cooking solutions to improve the livelihoods of the underserved.
In addition to presenting evidence for the measurable health and gender benefits and their monetization, the brief also summarizes lessons learned from structuring the CIB.