The "Sustainability Filter for Public Funds" was developed in joint work with WWF Germany against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic. This guide deals with the question of how public funds (especially those from funding programmes) can be used in a targeted manner to advance climate protection and other environmental goals.
For this purpose, a multi-stage question and answer procedure was developed that focuses on the purpose of investments and aims to minimise the additional bureaucratic effort for reports and audits. The design of the funding levels is based on the EU taxonomy regulation for sustainable economic activities and explicitly addresses the so-called grey economy.
In the area of publicly funded projects, the following funding levels are distinguished:
- Funding level A is to be applied if business activities are by definition associated with low risks for climate change or if explicitly sustainable projects are to be funded.
- Funding level B addresses economic activities that are covered by the EU taxonomy and whose taxonomy conformity can be proven accordingly.
- Funding level C addresses positive sustainability impacts of the value chain, for example when climate-friendly wrought-materials are used in end products.
- Funding level D covers all applicants who cannot demonstrate eligibility for the first three funding levels, but are willing to measure their own climate impact and reduce it with the help of science-based pathways.
The sustainability filter can be downloaded from the website here and contains a number of examples of its application (designed for the German government's first stimulus package in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic).