The Green Finance Institute released a new report analyzing investment barriers and innovative financial mechanisms in mobilizing private capital into the transport and waste sectors.
The report titled Mobilizing Climate Finance into the Philippines was made in collaboration with Department of Finance (DOF), the Climate Change Commission (CCC) and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
The report is a significant milestone in mobilizing finance for the Nationally Determined Contributions Implementation Plan (NDCIP).
The Philippines’ NDCIP estimates a significant climate financing need of US$72 billion across five priority sectors—agriculture, waste, industry, transport and energy.
With public financing committing to fund 2.7 pecent of the requirement, innovative financial mechanisms to unlock private financing are essential.
Foreign direct investment in the Philippines remains modest, but it does not flow to all sectors. While 89 percent of commercial banks in the Philippines support renewable energy, only 28 percent are backing resource efficiency and circular economy lending, and 22 percent are financing zero-carbon transport.
Reflecting a broader Asia-Pacific and global trend, data from the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI) shows that 35 percent of cumulative green bond proceeds flowed into energy projects from 2014 to 2023.
The CBI flagged mass transport and solid waste as “untapped” green investment sectors.
To support private capital deployment in key sectors, the GFI produced a report in collaboration with the DOF and CCC as the first step in a broader effort to drive investment into decarbonising the Philippines’ waste and transport sectors.
The report identifies key barriers to private finance, proposes initial policy and financial solutions and explores how the “Green Force” could evolve into the country’s sustainable investment platform to help close financing gaps and accelerate private capital mobilisation towards the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) targets and National Adaptation Programme (NAP) goals.
The GFI presented findings at a validation event in May 2025, co-hosted by DOF, CCC and FCDO, which brought together investors, industry and policymakers to test recommendations and help shape the next phase of the program where GFI will take forward proposed solutions to lay the pathway for capital mobilization.
The transport sector accounts for 23 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fuel combustion, with jeepneys alone estimated to contribute around 15.5 percent of the transport sector’s total emissions.
Yet modernization efforts have been slow: just 4 percent of the targeted jeepney fleet had been replaced as of year-end 2023, and fewer than 912 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations were operational as of March 2025.
The waste sector contributes 13 percent of the country’s GHG emissions and generated over 18 million tonnes of municipal solid waste in 2020, growing at an average of 3.4 percent annually over the last decade.
The country also loses an estimated US$790–890 million annually from unrecovered plastic resources, with only 9 percent of plastic waste currently recycled.
In 2018, the Asian Development Bank warned that municipal waste-to-energy (WtE) projects in the Philippines had seen virtually no uptake due to investment uncertainty. Yet 78 percent of the material value of plastics is lost to the Philippine economy each year. Solving the plastic waste challenge could unlock up to US$790–890 million in annual value.
