In its annual meetings last week in South Korea, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) launched a new large-scale climate finance mechanism, the Innovative Finance Facility for Climate in Asia and the Pacific (IF-CAP). IF-CAP is a donor-backed guarantee facility, where public, private, and philanthropic financing partners take risk off the ADB’s balance sheet by guaranteeing to backstop repayments for ADB mitigation and adaptation climate projects. By guaranteeing repayments on specific climate investments, IF-CAP will free up significant new space for ADB climate lending. Over an initial 5-year investment period, the ADB hopes to raise $3 billion in guarantees from financing partners, which could enable as much as $15 billion for climate projects across the region. […]