The global ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve net zero by 2050 requires large-scale investment in climate-mitigation technologies, including renewable energy, clean transportation, energy storage, green hydrogen and direct air capture. Countries and regions especially vulnerable to climate-induced events such as heatwaves, storms, floods and droughts, are at a high risk of devastating human and economic loss and, therefore, must ring-fence themselves with climate-adaptation projects, like sea walls, elevated roads and drought-resistant seeds, which require mobilisation of investments on an unprecedented scale – this is broadly termed climate finance.