How can cities move systematically from heat-risk data to a pipeline of finance-ready urban cooling projects?
Cities across Asia increasingly understand that extreme heat is putting people, infrastructure, and economies at risk. The challenge is translating that evidence into a pipeline of well-prioritized, investment-ready cooling projects for governments to fund or for private financiers to invest in.
This Lab will explore how Asian cities can move from heat data to project prioritization, project preparation and financing. Rather than cataloguing barriers to urban cooling finance, the session will focus on the practical process and steps required to build a pipeline of investable cooling projects.
The Lab will start from a working example: WRI's Urban Heat Solutions Accelerator, currently being piloted across five Brazilian cities. The Accelerator combines high-resolution data from WRI's Cool Cities Lab data platform with government engagement, locally led project prioritization, technical assistance and engagement with capital providers. The Brazilian experience provides a practical model for understanding how cities can move from identifying heat risk and cooling opportunities to developing projects capable of attracting public, concessional and private investment. Through this example, participants will become familiar with the journey from: data to government engagement and local ownership, to project identification, to technical assistance and project preparation, and through to financing pathways and implementation.
