ASEAN-UK Green Transition Fund launches Green Finance pillar

The UK Mission to ASEAN has launched the Green Finance pillar of the ASEAN–UK Green Transition Fund at an event in Kuala Lumpur. Palladium is acting as the lead delivery partner of the fund.

The ASEAN-UK Green Transition Fund (GTF) is a UK government programme to accelerate ASEAN’s transition to a clean and climate resilient economy by reducing emissions in key sectors, supporting green economic growth, and improving livelihoods of vulnerable people. The Fund provides advisory and technical assistance activities throughout the region, targeting all eleven ASEAN countries.

Delivered through the UK Partnering for Accelerated Climate Transition (UK PACT) mechanism, the ASEAN-UK Green Transition Fund is led by Palladium along with consortium partners Arup and Social Development Direct.

The newly launched Green Finance pillar offers support to the region’s transition towards a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy. Key areas of support include project preparation assistance and matchmaking for financing, voluntary carbon market ecosystem support, capacity-building for financial institutions’ disclosure on nature, and capacity-building to develop transition finance plans.

“Green investment can drive core ambitions: mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss; unlocking more climate and development finance and mobilising the private sector to help deliver growth and jobs. The ASEAN-UK Green Transition Fund delivers targeted technical assistance, strengthens partnerships with ASEAN, and aims to unlock investments,” said Ambassador Helen Fazey, the UK Ambassador to ASEAN.

At the launch event, several prominent speakers shared their insights on the importance of boosting finance for clean energy initiatives, including three from the consulting industry: Abhisek Kumar (Executive Director at KPMG), Gilles Pascual (Partner at EY), and Karan Dhanwani (Director at PwC).

ASEAN-UK Green Transition Fund

With 680 million people living in ASEAN countries facing climate-related risks, ASEAN is central to addressing the climate and environmental crises. The ASEAN-UK Green Transition Fund supports impactful projects through capacity-building, knowledge-sharing and peer to peer learning. It also pilots transformational technologies and facilitates evidence-based climate mitigation actions and policies, with climate adaptation as a co-benefit.

Green Finance is one of the five pillars of the Fund – the others are Climate Policy, Clean and Just Energy Transition, Sustainable Cities and Transportation, Nature-based Solutions.