The global context for climate finance is rapidly evolving. Technological advances have made renewables more cost-effective, while political and economic shifts have affected both public and private sector investment appetite.
The Clean Technology Fund’s (CTF) mission is focused on transformational change, financing actions that demonstrate, deploy, and transfer low-carbon technologies, embedded in national strategies to maximise impact.
Our independent evaluation assesses the CTF’s impact and effectiveness, alongside providing lessons for future Climate Investment Fund (CIF) programming. The evaluation aims to inform strategic decision-making and efforts to enhance transformational change in clean technology deployment.
About the Clean Technology Fund
The CTF is one of the earliest and largest climate finance programs under the CIF, established in 2008 to accelerate low-carbon, climate-resilient development in middle- and low-income countries.
Through concessional finance, the CTF supports the piloting and scaling of renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable transport, and greening industry projects, with a portfolio of $5.3 billion deployed across 178 projects and mobilizing $64.3 billion in co-financing.
Our role
Itad is leading the independent evaluation of the CTF, drawing on our extensive experience in monitoring, evaluation and learning for international development and climate finance. We will generate robust, credible insights that support decision-making and maximize the impact of climate finance.
This evaluation is designed around both accountability and learning. It seeks to understand what worked, how, why, and for whom in the design and implementation of the CTF, and to assess the extent to which its foundational objectives have been achieved. The findings will inform the evolution of the CTF and broader climate finance strategies, with a particular emphasis on learning for future programming.
The evaluation is guided by the OECD DAC criteria (relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, sustainability). It incorporates cross-cutting themes such as gender equity and social inclusion (GESI) and transformational change.
Our role encompasses:
- Designing and delivering a mixed-methods, theory-based evaluation, combining quantitative portfolio analysis, country-level case studies, and project-level deep dives.
- Engaging stakeholders across CIF governing bodies, recipient and contributor countries, multilateral development banks (MDBs), civil society, and the private sector to ensure participatory and utilisation-focused learning.
- Synthesising evidence from monitoring data, literature, and stakeholder interviews to assess the CTF’s contribution to transformational change, gender equity, and sustainable development.
- Providing actionable recommendations to guide ongoing and future CTF programming, and informing broader climate finance initiatives.
Our services include developing the evaluation framework, conducting data collection and analysis, facilitating stakeholder workshops, and producing interim and final reports.
Our methods and approaches
To achieve our goals, we employ a rigorous, multi-layered evaluation approach:
- Theory-Based Evaluation: using the CTF logic model and theory of change to map causal pathways and test assumptions about how change happens.
- Mixed Methods: combining quantitative analysis (GHG reductions, finance leveraged, installed capacity, energy savings) with qualitative methods (key informant interviews, document reviews, stakeholder surveys).
- Portfolio Analysis: reviewing global results and benchmarking CTF performance against other climate finance mechanisms.
- Country Case Studies: assessing outcomes in selected countries, including alignment with national priorities and contextual factors.
- Project Case Studies: conducting light-touch and deep-dive analyses to understand implementation progress, mechanisms of change, and lessons learned.
- Participatory Engagement: involving stakeholders throughout the process to ensure findings are relevant, credible, and actionable.
- Gender & Inclusion Lens: systematically integrating GESI considerations into all stages of the evaluation.
Outcomes and impact
The intended impact of the evaluation is to improve the alignment of climate finance with national priorities and strategies, support greater mobilisation of public and private finance for low-carbon development, ensure enhanced gender equity and social inclusion in climate investments, and strengthen capacity for transformational change at scale.
Specifically, we aim to generate:
- Evidence-Based Insights: a comprehensive assessment of the CTF’s effectiveness, efficiency, and impact, including its contribution to transformational change and climate objectives.
- Actionable Recommendations: practical guidance for strengthening CTF programming in the current global context, and informing future climate finance strategies.
- Enhanced Learning: lessons for CIF, MDBs, recipient and contributor countries, and other climate finance actors on what drives success in clean technology deployment.
- Broader Sector Implications: insights into how climate finance can be more responsive, inclusive, and impactful in a changing global context.
