GCoM-City Climate Finance Gap Fund Partnership: A Year in Review

In September, the City Climate Finance Gap Fund (Gap Fund) marked another anniversary, and its partnership with the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM) continues to help cities move closer to their climate goals.

Over the past year, the Partnership with GCoM broadened its global reach, enabling more cities to translate their ambitions into implementation opportunities. Through a multilingual survey, the Partnership collected insights into the challenges cities face in preparing climate-smart projects, including limited technical expertise, competing priorities within the government structure, coordination gaps that hinder focused climate action, and insufficient resources for feasibility studies and project preparation.

To address some of these challenges, the initiative expanded its global reach, working with even more partners and city networks. Throughout the year, 33 awareness-raising events engaged participants from 342 cities across 91 countries, and 27 capacity-building workshops reached participants from 429 cities in 43 countries. As a result, over 4700 city representatives have stronger capacities and expertise to submit climate projects to the Gap Fund.

Working directly with cities, we identified over 111 new project ideas this year, bringing the total portfolio to 285 from 59 countries. These ideas receive practical coaching, project reviews, and technical advice to improve their request to the Gap Fund.

One of those cities taking a significant step toward a low-carbon, climate-resilient future is Karatay, in Türkiye. After working with the GCoM-Gap Fund Partnership team and the EU for Energy Transition in Türkiye (EU4ETT) project, Karatay's Innovative Energy Efficiency Solutions project was officially approved by the Gap Fund on 29 July 2025. The project will receive technical assistance, including detailed building assessments to identify the potential for solar photovoltaic and energy efficiency upgrades, financial modeling to help secure funding, and technical designs for cost-effective installations.

Since 2022, the GCoM-Gap Fund Partnership has helped cities shape impactful projects that align with national programs and priorities. Through collaboration with development banks, city networks, urban initiatives, national and subnational governments, and UN entities, the initiative builds a strong bank of local-level projects ready to move closer to implementation.

This partnership demonstrates that with the right support, cities can boldly step into a low-carbon, climate-resilient future.

The GCoM-Gap Fund Partnership:
Helps cities in developing countries refine early-stage climate projects into proposals seeking to receive Gap Fund support.
Provides targeted training, building local capacity to identify project ideas, reviews concepts and supports the preparation of the Expression of Interest.
Shares knowledge, promotes local and national level alignment, addresses key barriers and promotes low-carbon, resilient development.
Acts as a broker, connecting cities' climate ambitions with opportunities to advance climate projects into implementation.