Sovereign loan guarantees (SLGs) are a powerful -and dramatically underutilized- tool in the U.S. climate finance arsenal. For decades, the U.S. government wielded SLGs to dramatic effect, enabling countries on the periphery of global capital markets to raise $26 billion in low-cost financing at negligible cost to U.S. taxpayers. In so doing, U.S. guarantees created direct cash that supported everything from peacebuilding to financial transparency in recipient countries. Then, just as climate exigencies created the best use case for loan guarantees in the history of the program, this powerful instrument fell into disuse.

What happened to the U.S. Sovereign Loan Guarantee program? What implications could a reformed and revitalized SLG program have for emerging market decarbonization? And how could a handful of key reforms bring back one of America’s most agile, scalable, and efficient tools in the fight against global climate change?

Join us on March 6, 2024, for a conversation with Clemence Landers and Rowan Rockafellow as they discuss their research on the US SLG program, its complex history, and its unique potential to transform emerging market climate finance.

Speakers:

Clemence Landers, Senior Policy Fellow at the Center for Global Development

Rowan Rockafellow, Graduate Candidate, Research Consultant

Phillip Torres, Program Director for the Sovereign Decarbonization program