Climate Finance Fund

The Climate Finance Fund was a project of the European Climate Foundation. It was financially supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. As of February 2026, its website included a post declaring that its funds had been “fully allocated” and that its operations would be wound down by the end of 2025. ¹

Background

The Climate Finance Fund was a philanthropic platform that served to facilitate capital investments in climate energy projects, with a focus on initiatives in China, the European Union (EU), and the United States. It was formed in September 2021. ¹

Climate Finance Fund was a project of the European Climate Foundation. It was financially supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. ¹

Activities

The Climate Finance Fund aimed to allocate capital investments to initiatives working “across the supply chain,” from small enterprises to asset managers. Its goal was to help facilitate the “systemic decarbonization of capital.” It argued that, as of 2025, only $600 million was invested per year in climate programs, while in its estimate there would have to be between $1.6 trillion and $3.8 trillion invested annually to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. ¹

As of February 2026, the Climate Finance Fund claimed that its funds had been “fully allocated” and that its operations would wind down by the end of 2025. ¹

Affiliations

As of 2024, the Climate Finance Fund, along with a dozen other financial institutions, was a member of the steering committee of the Justice Climate Fund, an environmental financing organization that serves as a “green bank” to left-of-center climate investment projects.  ^{2 3 4}

The Justice Climate Fund was selected by the Biden administration Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to award funds to climate groups on behalf of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund’s (GGRF) Clean Communities Investment Accelerator (CCIA). The GGRF was brought into existence by the Inflation Reduction Act to make taxpayer-funded investments in weather-dependent energy projects in low-income areas. The role of the Climate Finance Fund as a steering board member was to “ensure that all communities equitably benefit.” ^{2 3 4}

The Climate Finance Fund claimed that a grant it made to the Community Builders of Color Coalition, a fiscal project of the left-of-center African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs, led to the formation of the Justice Climate Fund. ⁵

Partners

As of 2026, the Climate Finance Fund’s institutional partners listed on its website included La Nef pour la Banque Ethique, Adasina Social Capital, the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF), Optus Bank, Bank for Good, Business for Climate Finance, the Clean Energy Credit Union, Inclusiv, New Energy Nexus, Nia Impact Capital, Sustainable Capital Advisors, VC Include, ZOE Institute for Future-Fit Economies, Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Green Finance (GF) Forum of 60, and Governance Solutions Group (GSG). ⁶

Leadership

As of 2025, Marilyn White was listed as the managing director of the Climate Finance Fund. Prior to joining the Fund, she was the lead of energy practice at Village Capital, served as a senior research fellow at Project Drawdown, and was the manager of innovation projects at Orano and Framatome. She is the author of Sustainability at Work: Careers that Make a Difference. ¹