This report is part of the project “Strengthen national climate policy implementation: comparative empirical learning & creating linkage to climate finance”, which aims to develop studies that contribute to implementation of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in Brazil, Germany/EU, India, Indonesia and South Africa. Coordinated by DIW Berlin and financially supported by the Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety this project began in July 2019 and has a duration of four years. Each year, the project consortium will produce an international study on a topic of common interest that is relevant to the interface between climate finance and policies. The international study for the first year (2019-2020) — entitled “Transformational change towards low-carbon development in emerging economies: insights from international climate finance cases” — investigated how International Climate Finance (ICF) can support transformational change to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement in emerging nations.