Opportunity
The Scottish Government’s Domestic Climate Change Division was examining the overall costs of Scotland’s climate change programme, including mitigation, adaptation and just transition, and how those costs could be met. A central question was how the public sector could use its role and resources to unlock private sector funding.
As part of this work, the Scottish Government created an Investment and Climate Finance Training Programme to equip officials with the skills to explore funding options and actions for financing Scotland’s climate ambitions. We were asked to design and deliver core training modules on the fundamentals of climate finance, to give all staff a common grounding in the topic.
Approach
We built a bespoke ‘Introduction to Climate Finance’ course, designed to move from core concepts to practical policy application.
The course ran across four online sessions :
- Introduction to climate finance and Scotland’s investment landscape
- How investors evaluate climate projects: an introduction to infrastructure project appraisal
- Understanding investor appetite and the risk-return trade-off
- How government can incentivise private finance for climate.
We used an informal, discussion-led format, combining short taught inputs with interactive learning, Q&A, and Scotland-based case studies.
We refined the course as it progressed, using feedback after each session to shape the next. Our academic team brought both teaching expertise and extensive industry experience in finance and asset management, linking theory to real-world investment decision-making.
Impact
The course was popular with staff with an average of 60 people attending each session. Participants joined from all grades and policy areas in the Scottish Government, including transport, energy, agriculture and housing.
The course gave participants a practical understanding of climate investment and finance, especially how investors assess risk, return and capital allocation. It helped officials engage more confidently with private finance and develop their thinking about how public resources can be used efficiently to support the green transition.
Participants used learning from the course to:
- Inform discussions with asset managers and investors
- Review and update grant schemes
- Strengthen the business case for new investment proposals
- Identify potential financing models across net zero policy areas
- Support joint working across the Scottish Government on private sector investment.
Participants reported a deeper understanding of what made propositions investable, including how investors evaluate projects, how policy interventions affect “investability”, and the role of government in shifting investor decisions. They strengthened their understanding of financing models for both national and local projects, and developed a clearer view of barriers to private investment and practical ways to address them.
Feedback from course participants
This was an extremely useful and relevant course for my area of work. These learnings will support my engagement with investors and public finance organisations, and support live policy development... Craig and Mengfei were both excellent presenters, skilled at explaining technical concepts and relating these to real-world, relevant examples in simple and intuitive ways.
We are considering a solar farm investment. The training will help inform the business case for that.
This is the best training I've ever done in the Scottish Government. It was relevant, challenging and delivered by experts... The trainers were excellent. Very knowledgeable, willing to challenge our thinking, did lots of prep and applied their knowledge to our policy areas.
Lots of good stuff about the commercial realities and how you make a deal work and bankable.