How the U.S. can still meet its global climate finance pledges

In 2021, President Biden committed to increase U.S. international climate finance to over $11.4 billion per year by 2024. Of this, $3 billion per year was committed to investments in adaptation – historically underfunded – as part of the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE).

If delivered, this vital funding would spur much-needed emissions reductions in other countries, help the most vulnerable communities who have done the least to contribute to the climate crisis to adapt to its mounting impacts, and protect Americans and people around the world against the physical, economic, and security threats of climate change. It would also reinvigorate U.S. climate leadership, rebuilding trust with developing countries and catching up with other G7 countries who provide much more climate finance relative to their wealth.

In mid-March, Congress finally passed the relevant spending bill for Fiscal Year 2024. It contained just $1 billion in dedicated funding for international climate programs. This is the third year in a row that Congress has failed to sufficiently deliver on U.S. international climate finance commitments. Just $1 billion in a spending package totaling $1.59 trillion sends a damaging message to the rest of the world.

Inadequate international climate spending weakens the U.S., undermining its economic competitiveness in clean energy markets, alienating allies and would-be strategic partners, and ceding diplomatic influence on one of the leading issues shaping international affairs this century. Climate finance is at the center of the “grand bargain” that underpins the Paris Agreement: that all countries need to do more to tackle the climate crisis, but richer countries must support poorer countries to do so. If the U.S. fails to uphold its end of the bargain it will have a hard time rallying other countries to deliver on their commitments.

Though Congress has been unable to come through, the Biden Administration can still deliver on its climate finance promises. Outlined below is the narrow pathway for the administration to still achieve the $11.4 billion goal in Fiscal Year 2024. But first, let’s unpack what Congress did and didn’t include in its FY24 spending package.

What has Congress appropriated for international climate?

In its FY24 Budget Request, the Biden Administration asked Congress to appropriate over $5 billion dollars in international climate investments for an array of bilateral and multilateral programs to rapidly cut emissions and support vulnerable countries and communities to deal with the disproportionate impacts of climate change.

Yet every year Congress has failed to meet most of the Administration’s international climate finance requests. Even worse, in FY24, Congress cut spending even lower than the disappointing levels in FY22 and FY23, in large part due to the draconian spending caps forced into last year’s debt limit legislation. 

Below is a break-down of the key international climate accounts (figure 1):

Bilateral climate programs focused on adaptation, clean energy, and sustainable landscapes: $679 million appropriated in FY24, $36 million less than FY23. This specifies minimum amounts that the U.S. government must spend on climate programs through agencies such as the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Adaptation bilateral programs ($256 million in FY24) support developing countries to reduce the impact of severe weather and climate-fueled disasters on critical infrastructure, agricultural productivity, and public health, among other things. Clean energy programs ($247 million in FY24) support innovation in and deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency around the world. Sustainable landscapes programs ($176 million in FY24), help protect critical carbon-storing landscapes, including forests and wetlands, including by curbing deforestation.

Green Climate Fund (GCF): $0 appropriated in FY24, same as FY23. The Green Climate Fund is the world’s largest multilateral fund focused on climate change. It facilitates transformative investments that reduce emissions and help poorer countries adapt to climate impacts. The GCF has approved almost $14 billion in funding for over 250 projects. These investments are projected to reduce 2.9 billion tones of greenhouse gases, equivalent to the annual emissions of 745 coal power plants, and to increase the resilience of 1 billion people. For every dollar the U.S. invests in the GCF, it leverages $2.8 from other funders and the private sector. In 2014, the Obama administration pledged $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund. The Obama administration delivered $1 billion in 2016 and 2017, and the Biden administration delivered a further $1 billion in 2023, leaving $1 billion outstanding from the decade-old pledge. Last year, the Biden administration renewed the U.S. commitment to the GCF by pledging a further $3 billion to the Fund’s second replenishment.

Clean Technology Fund (CTF): $125 million appropriated in FY24, same level as FY23. This contribution will subsidize a concessional loan to the CTF for its work to accelerate coal power plant retirement and clean energy deployment in major emitting countries.

Global Environment Facility (GEF): $150.2 million appropriated in FY24, same level as FY23. The GEF is the oldest multilateral environmental fund, which support several global environmental conventions, including biodiversity, desertification, mercury and climate. The fund has long enjoyed strong bipartisan support for its work on a variety of environmental challenges. In 2022 the fund underwent its eighth replenishment, raising $5.3 billion in pledges from 29 governments, including emerging economies such as Brazil, China, India and South Africa. This funding will help deliver on the U.S. pledge of $600 million over four years.

Montreal Protocol Multilateral Fund (MLF): $49.3 million appropriated in FY24, $2.6 million less than FY23. This fund supports developing countries to reduce their use of super climate pollutants that are replacing ozone-depleting substances.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): $14 million appropriated in FY24, $1 million less than FY23. The IPCC and UNFCCC are the UN’s climate science and negotiating bodies, respectively.

In early March, the Biden administration sent Congress its budget request for Fiscal Year 2025. Responding to the highly constrained caps Congress placed on overall government spending going forward, the administration is asking for only $3.8 billion for international climate accounts, the majority through bilateral channels.