Title page 1

Contents 3

Abstract 1

1. Introduction 5

2. Trends in World Bank mitigation finance impact metric reporting 7

3. What are World Bank mitigation projects aiming to achieve? 10

4. World Bank projects with GHG metrics 13

4.1. What do World Bank GHG indicators say? 16

4.2. What quantity of GHG emissions has the World Bank (and TFs and FIFs) already averted? 18

4.3. How cost-effectively do World Bank mitigation projects cut emissions? 22

4.4. World Bank GHG impact metrics - conclusion 25

5. Conclusion 26

6. Recommendations 27

Annex 1. How is CO₂ impact measured? 29

Annex 2. Natural language processing methods 33

Clustering of indicator text for thematic grouping 33

Identifying GHG-focused indicators using BERT-based text classification 34

TABLE 1. Breakdown of World Bank 100% mitigation projects by indicator focus 12

TABLE 2. Characteristics of World Bank funded mitigation projects with GHG indicators 16

TABLE 3. Main funders of projects reporting through World Bank system but with no IDA/IBRD commitments 17

TABLE 4. Rough estimate of cost per tCO₂eq achieved by projects with GHG indicators 23

FIGURE 1. Finance for projects with mitigation component, by presence of indicator information 8

FIGURE 2. Percentage of World Bank mitigation finance with indicator information 9

FIGURE 3. Word cloud representing performance metrics for 100% mitigation projects 13

FIGURE 4. Projects with 100% mitigation coefficient, by presence of indicators 14

FIGURE 5. Projects with any mitigation coefficient, by presence of indicators 15

FIGURE 6. Percent of total emissions reductions to date by country (with mitigation objective and GHG indicators present), top 10 countries 20

FIGURE 7. Share of emissions reductions against share of mitigation commitments, by income group 21

FIGURE 8. Cost per tCO₂eq percentiles (assuming 20-year project life) 25

FIGURE A1. Emissions reductions, assuming the GCF project took place in different countries 32

Annex Boxes 4

BOX A1. A tale of two solar projects 31