By Aditya Raghwa 

Across the world, especially in Asia, states and regions are stepping up to lead climate action. This shift was front and centre at the inaugural Mumbai Climate Week 2026, where subnational governments, investors, and practitioners came together around a shared challenge: 

How do we turn climate ambition into actual investment? 

Coming on the heels of COP30 Belem, Mumbai Climate Week represented an important step in providing a dedicated platform to advance climate action.  

Climate Group as the International Engagement Partner, hosted the Subnational Climate Investment Roundtable. Bringing together climate experts, advocates, and subnational leaders, the dialogue focused on accelerating FIDs (Final Investment Decisions) across key climate-aligned sectors.  

The timing matters. Across India and the wider region, countries are scaling up climate ambition while also facing growing energy security concerns. Ongoing instability linked to the Middle East has exposed vulnerabilities in global energy systems, driving price volatility and reinforcing the urgency of building resilient, low-carbon infrastructure closer to home. 

Yet even as the case for investment strengthens, a familiar problem persists. Finance is not flowing to the level of government closest to communities. States are responsible for delivering much of the transition across energy, transport, land use, and infrastructure, but often lack access to the capital needed to act at scale. The issue isn’t a shortage of ideas or money, rather it is a shortage of investment-ready project pipelines and a disconnect between states and financial institutions on what a ‘bankable’ project means. This is where subnational governments become the missing link. 

They sit between national ambition and local delivery. They plan infrastructure, regulate key sectors, and work directly with communities and businesses. In practice, they are the ones who turn strategy into projects, but without the tools to structure those projects for investment, progress stalls. And stalling is not an option that we can afford.  

At Mumbai Climate Week, this gap, and how to close it, was front and centre. 

Maharashtra’s leadership at the forefront 

The dialogue opened with a strong commitment to action by the Government of Maharashtra which announced it’s Maharashtra Climate Investment Facilitation Program. The program is designed to move beyond ambition and frameworks to focus on the “last mile” of climate finance: turning public priorities into bankable opportunities and enabling final investment decisions at scale.  

In partnership with AVPN and auctusESG, Climate Group is leveraging its global experience in climate investment facilitation and stakeholder engagement to help mobilise domestic capital alongside international finance to implement key climate-aligned projects in the state.  

Through the global reach of the Under2 Coalition, we’re also bringing to bear shared experiences, best practices and peer-to-peer learning opportunities.   

Access to climate finance: The bridge between ambition and action  

A core theme across the dialogues was that subnational governments were at the forefront to accelerate on-the-ground climate implementation of projects across sectors and systems. Their actions are not only driving much needed emission reductions, but also delivering on national aspirations, including achieving economic and developmental goals. As we heard at the COP30 Local Leaders Forum in Rio, cities, states and regions have the influence to regulate, plan and signal markets in critical sectors such as power, transport and industry.  

While there are clear climate priorities and increasing project pipelines at the state and city levels, finance remains a stubborn barrier for subnational governments. In order for states & regions to convert their ambitions into action, finance becomes the key enabler, particularly in developing countries like India.  

Our recent work in Brazil shows us that this is not an insurmountable problem. Over a period of two years, three Brazilian states developed of a bankable pipeline of nine projects with a total budget envelope of $USD 1.4 billion. This "pipeline" approach has helped leverage visibility among different financiers – over 24 investors from regional, national and subnational development banks, commercial banks, and ESG finance, among others.  

Converting project ideas to implementable projects 

Government representatives from states & regions highlighted how they require support to prepare and aggregate investment-ready project portfolios including assistance on standardising documentation, strengthening governance, aligning projects with national, economic and development goals as well as improving readiness for financiers and capital markets.  

During the meeting, financial institutions (both public and private as well as philanthropies) highlighted solutions such as expanding the use of green bonds, the need to bundle small scale projects into large investment-grade portfolios, as well as sharing their ongoing investment strategies to enable better access to blended finance instruments for large scale, climate-aligned, public infrastructure projects.  

The Government of Québec shared their experience in advancing ambitious climate action through leveraging market-based mechanisms such as carbon markets, including the Québec–California linked carbon market, the only one of its kind in the world to date, demonstrating the power of cross-border subnational collaboration in reducing emissions. 

Funding resilient and climate adaptive systems:  

While clean energy, technology and industry projects are crucial, there was a shared agreement that projects with a focus on providing adaptation and resilience-linked co-benefits are crucial – especially in Asia. Local governments are already responding to escalating climate risks, from heatwaves to floods, but face barriers including governance gaps, limited budgets, and data gaps. 

Representatives from states like Meghalaya and Assam highlighted their approach to developing projects that address water & forest management, while trying to boost economic development through promotion of ecotourism. These examples also reinforced the importance of developing projects that not only reduce emissions but also help in developing resilience through adoption of holistic, community-based approaches. 

Looking Ahead 

Imagine the potential if we truly get things going on climate finance. From Sao Paulo to Mumbai – we're seeing subnational governments proactively solving local issues while delivering economic growth, job opportunities and advancing a sustainable just transition.  

As the region continue to ramp up their climate leadership in an increasingly challenging global world - it will be the states, regions and provinces within these countries that drive systemic, bottom-up transformation.   

What is not debatable is that without access to finance, the cost of the transformation required will remain the biggest roadblock to converting ambition to action across Asia. 

At Climate Group, we’re strongly focused on working with subnationals and other stakeholders to setup an enabling ecosystem that drives FIDs into projects that aren’t just climate-aligned but also just make plain economic sense.  

At our Asia Action Summit in Singapore in May, we’ll keep the momentum going and help ensure the bold leadership emerging across Asia continues its momentum towards a sustainable, economically sound and just future.  

States are not just part of the system; they are the missing piece to close the gap. Unlocking climate finance at scale means investing where implementation actually happens. And that means backing states and regions.