Reall wins prestigious global climate award programme

Reall’s affordable green mortgage project has been selected from more than 150 applications as the winning submission in the Zero Carbon Buildings stream for The Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance.

Watch Bridget Adams, from Reall’s Global Policy and Influence Team announce our win.

Ian Shapiro, Chief Executive at Reall, said; “Today Kenya needs two million homes, and with a young population, Kenya’s cities are growing fast. We want this growth to work for people on low incomes and the planet by introducing innovative credit assessment tools for green, affordable homes. Working with the Lab, we want to demonstrate that climate-smart affordable homes are an untapped $17 trillion sustainable investment opportunity.”  

The Lab

The Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance develops cutting-edge financial concepts that tackle barriers to investment and unlock sustainable private financing in emerging economies. Reall are one of seven new climate finance ideas for its 2022 acceleration program. Pilots are planned for Brazil, India, Kenya, South Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Being named one of the 2022 Lab winners marks a significant step forward for Reall’s green building agenda. The Lab offers in-kind analytical support and expertise from its Secretariat, the Climate Policy Initiative, alongside a network from governments and the private sector, to develop, refine and stress test our solution to take it scale across Kenya.

The solution – Green, affordable housing finance

Reall’s Green Affordable Housing Finance mechanism is a mortgage instrument that provides data-driven alternative credit assessments for IFC-EDGE certified green homes to underwrite borrowers with low and informal incomes. In piloting the idea in Kenya, we will demonstrate green building market viability to catalyse transformation of the building sector while creating new green jobs.

Our model encompasses a data-driven approach to unlocking green housing finance and mortgages for the bottom 40% of income earners, and will be piloted in Kenya. The solution not only addresses the supply of affordable housing, but also incentives climate-smart construction methods, tapping into both the following innovations:

• Alternative Credit Assessment tools, through our partner Syntellect’s RightProfile technology, enabling unbanked and informal workers increased access to housing finance. The project predicts a mortgage lending opportunity worth an estimated one billion dollars each year in Kenya.
• Climate-smart EDGE certification from International Finance Corporation, part of The World Bank, securing development of energy efficient affordable homes. An anticipated 30 million tons of CO2 emissions could be avoided in meeting Kenya’s two million housing deficit.

Read more on Reall's winning project         Read about all 2022 Lab winners