Green Finance Barriers and Solution Strategies for Emerging Economies: The Case of India

The need to increase green developers’ access to finance is critical and urgent for emerging economies that are currently facing an annual green financing gap of $2.5 trillion. This article investigates barriers and strategies for promoting green finance (hereafter GF) in India which is one of the fastest emerging economies globally. The article uses a two-phase methodology. In the first phase, an exhaustive literature survey followed by a three-round modified Delphi method is used to extract significant barriers and solution strategies for GF adoption. In the second phase, the best worst method is used to rank the barriers using their relative weights, and the solution strategies by utilizing global weights as input. The article finds that policy, economic, and knowledge barriers are the top three barriers for GF adoption. Clear green policies and risk assessment frameworks; credit enhancement mechanisms for green developers; low-cost refinancing and securitization markets for green technology and products; and combining directed finance with incentivized finance, public finance with private finance, and financial markets with technology are some of the most important strategies obtained from this article for promoting GF adoption.