Our grants

Mission

Studies show that between 2016-2021, less than 5% of total public adaptation finance reached the local community level in LDCs. When adaptation finance was available, it was often short-term, top-down, project-focused or siloed in specific sectors.

The Least Developed Countries Initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience (LIFE-AR) supports the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) towards climate-resilient development pathways and promotes a paradigm shift in how climate responses are prioritised, financed, coordinated, and evaluated.

Overview of grant  

QCF is supporting LIFE-AR to advance LDC-led, long-term institutional financing and capacity building. LIFE-AR’s goal is to ensure at least 70% of funds reach the local level and support work local communities identify as priorities.

With QCF’s support, LIFE-AR is strengthening the climate resilience of LDCs through what it calls a “business unusual” approach, where national and local capabilities and institutions are strengthened, enabling communities to become decision-makers and to shape investments from the outset.

QCF’s funding is enabling LIFE-AR to implement and share its climate finance delivery mechanism and investment process in two pilot countries – Bhutan and The Gambia. The findings provide concrete examples for improved resilience and are guiding the mechanism’s roll-out country-wide and to other LDCs.

Through this partnership, QCF is helping create climate-resilient communities, economies, and environments in line with the LDC 2050 Vision, and to deliver LIFE-AR’s goal to use locally led adaptation investment to help LDCs become more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

Mission 

Clean Air Fund (CAF) is a philanthropic organisation creating a future where everyone can breathe clean air. CAF supports organisations across the globe to build public demand for clean air, influence decision-makers in addressing air pollution, and drive policy action.  

Overview of grant 

QCF’s grant to CAF supports its work on black carbon, a super-pollutant which is produced through the incomplete combustion of polluting fuels when, for example, diesel, woodlands, biofuel or biomass are burned. 

Black carbon, also known as soot, damages human health and worsens climate change by absorbing sunlight in the atmosphere; changing cloud cover, rainfall and snowfall; and accelerating the melting of snow and ice. It disproportionately impacts the most disadvantaged communities, particularly in the Global South. 

Global efforts to reduce black carbon emissions have stalled in recent years due to scientific uncertainty, lack of policy drive, and insufficient funding. QCF is therefore supporting CAF to resolve scientific bottlenecks, build coalitions across climate and health, and showcase the feasibility of solutions to reduce black carbon emissions – all to help deliver CAF’s goal of reducing black carbon by 35% by 2030.  

CAF’s programme is successfully elevating black carbon as a health and climate issue in critical intergovernmental forums, including the UN Climate Change Conferences (COPs) and the World Health Organization's Global Conferences on Air Pollution and Health. CAF is also informing the ongoing revision of the Gothenburg Protocol, which could set the world’s first binding targets on black carbon in the European Union. 

Mission:

The current investment landscape in Africa reveals a significant gap in commercial capital, with only 10-20% of private investment coming from institutional investors.

KawiSafi II is a $90m fund investing in Africa’s energy transition and low-carbon growth through equity and quasi-equity instruments that address the twin challenges of poverty and climate change.

By leveraging a blended finance structure and targeting market returns, the fund is uniquely designed to unlock public and private capital to help investors build confidence, support market development, and reduce the perception of geographic and sector risk.

Overview of grant

KawiSafi II has a pipeline of high impact climate tech businesses which will reach over 50 million people – a third of which live below the poverty line. The fund aims to create over 60,000 jobs and avert 50Mt of carbon emissions, while enhancing the resilience of people, infrastructure, and nature.

With QCF's support, KawiSafi Fund II is investing between $500,000 and $5million in up to 20 venture stage companies that work to increase access to clean energy, climate-smart mobility and logistics tools, and unlock carbon and nature-based solutions. This will offer essential goods and services to individuals and businesses, while increasing employment and access to opportunities across the continent.

Mission 

The Green Finance Institute’s (GFI) Built Environment Programme is launching and scaling consumer finance products and enabling policy solutions to decarbonise UK homes. The UK Committee on Climate Change estimates £250 billion must be invested in UK home upgrades by 2050, but significant challenges persist. From high upfront costs and long payback periods to low public awareness of the benefits of green homes, the UK risks missing out on a signification investment opportunity. 

Overview of grant  

Building on the success of phase one of its Built Environment Programme – and with support from QCF – GFI launched the Green Building Finance Scalebox.  

The Scalebox is building a complete, accessible Green Home Finance Landscape, including pioneering products such as Property Linked Finance and Green Mortgages, blended finance structures that enable investment in heat networks and area-based projects, and support for the UK Government’s green homes finance offer.  

The programme also helps credit unions bring Green Home Finance Principles-aligned loans to market, explores international green finance models for adaptation in the UK, and fosters collaboration across the sector. The Consumer Finance Group brings together 50 lenders alongside industry, policymakers, and third-sector organisations  to collectively push for green UK housing. 

Over the past three years, the number of green mortgage products aligned with the GFI’s Green Home Finance Principles has grown nearly twentyfold, while green loans on the market have tripled. 

Mission  

HERA (formerly Climate Resilience for All) protects the health and livelihoods of women and vulnerable communities from extreme heat.

Overview of grant   

As temperatures continue to rise each year, QCF is supporting HERA to help vulnerable people build resilience to one of the deadliest climate hazards: extreme heat. The most profound impacts of extreme heat are felt by the one billion urban poor residing in slums and informal settlements, and emerging data shows that women are disproportionately harmed by heat - physically and economically.

In April 2024, HERA designed and launched the Women’s Climate Shock Insurance and Livelihood Initiative (WCSI) in India, which went live just in time for India's 2024 heat season. The programme initially provided income support directly to 50,000 women working in the informal sector in the most heat-exposed occupations across the states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat including salt pan miners, waste recyclers, construction workers, and farmers. The sweltering temperatures triggered the insurance and cash assistance providing a lifeline for women who are unable to work during the heatwaves. The programme is delivered with HERA's partner, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and in collaboration with Swiss Re Public Sector Solutions.

HERA's WCSI has since enrolled 225,000 informal women workers, combining financial protections with other risk reducing interventions, including early warning systems and protective equipment such as tarps to cover roasting crops and cool boxes for meat and produce, women have more opportunities to survive and thrive in extreme heat.

With QCF’s support, HERA is expanding the initiative across India and launching in Pakistan, Sub-Saharan, and West Africa. QCF’s funding also supports HERA to build the Africa Urban Resilience Heat Initiative to reduce heat vulnerability and increase heat literacy for women and vulnerable communities across the region. The funding will also grow the body of evidence and applied heat science for informing policymakers and the field and the edifying of women-led community governance, economic analysis, and communications tools.

Mission 

Allied Climate Partners (ACP) is a philanthropic investment organisation with a mission to invest catalytic capital to address climate finance bottlenecks in emerging economies across Africa, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Central America.

Overview of grant

QCF has joined other foundations and investors to support ACP with early-stage project development finance for climate initiatives in emerging economies where there is currently a lack of risk-oriented capital.

By making early-stage investments that demonstrate a path to commercial viability and scalability for these types of projects, ACP attracts commercially oriented, public, and private sector capital to areas that might not have otherwise been funded.

QCF contributed to ACP’s initial round of philanthropically backed junior capital to support the establishment of third-party funds, platforms, and other investments in early- and development-stage climate-related projects and companies. 

ACP’s catalytic capital is crucial for setting up investment mandates that are carried out by local partners. ACP’s first investment, the Southeast Asia Clean Energy Facility II (SEACEF II), announced it reached its final close of $175M in March 2025.

Mission

The Climate Solutions Catalyst - based at Imperial College’s Grantham Institute - is a novel two-year programme that unearths promising yet untapped climate solutions from the UK’s research community. It tests how these solutions might best be supported to scale up to significantly address climate change.

Overview of grant 

With the support of QCF, the Climate Solutions Catalyst project identifies the most promising climate research from UK universities. With QCF’s support, the Climate Solutions Catalyst’s team is building a machine learning-powered search tool to identify high-potential climate solutions hidden within UK academic research papers: ALMa (Accelerating climate innovation using Language Model based analysis).

ALMa’s first search focused on Green Catalysis, an area where there is significant need for innovation, and successfully scanned around 7,000 research papers across 13 universities. From this, 83 promising climate change innovations were identified. The three that were selected for tailored support as part of the Catalyst’s first cohort included: microbial upcycling of bio-plastic waste into high-value chemicals, earth-abundant catalysts for green hydrogen production, and sustainable components for next-generation sodium-ion batteries.

Alongside ALMa, the Catalyst provides bespoke support to help researchers overcome early-stage barriers – from clarifying their value proposition to understanding system-level fit – to accelerate the journey from lab to real-world impact.

Mission 

The Global Methane Hub (GMH) is working to dramatically reduce methane levels in the atmosphere to protect people and the planet from the worst impacts of climate change. In 2023 GMH launched its Enteric Methane R&D Accelerator, the largest public-private-philanthropy coordinated investment in livestock methane mitigation research.

Overview of grant 

With backing from QCF, GMH’s Enteric Methane R&D Accelerator is coordinating a global research strategy to explore promising technologies that mitigates methane emissions. The goal is to discover several solutions that are fit-for-purpose and independently tested.

The research strategy includes long-term independent trials of methane-inhibiting feed additives, discovery and development of new ones, and breeding of low methane livestock. It also investigates potential vaccines that lessen methane production in livestock. Since launching, 48 organisations from 27 countries have been supported in the Accelerator’s research projects.

Mission

The Youth Climate Justice Fund (YCJF) provides young leaders with trust-based funding, resources, and youth-to-youth capacity building. So far, YCJF has committed over $5M to 115 youth-led groups in more than 50 countries focused on intersection of climate justice and social inequalities such as climate adaptation, resilience building, pollution reduction, and advocating for bold and equitable green transitions.

Overview of grant

With support from QCF, the YCFJ is supporting youth-led climate and environmental justice groups around the world with core and flexible funding pots of up to $100,000 each. At least 70% of this funding will reach emerging, local-level organisations to sustain high-impact, locally led action.

YCJF complements this funding with skills development in project management, volunteer coordination, and financial management, as well as facilitating peer-to-peer support to ensure this next generation of climate leaders thrives.

With QCF’s funding, the YCJF is strengthening its participatory grantmaking process by expanding its network of locally rooted regional advisers. These advisers identify and support youth-led climate groups to apply to the YCJF’s open-call for funding.