Responding to climate change is commonly understood as a financial challenge: What are the expected costs of the impacts of climate change? How much money is needed to reduce emissions to a safe level and to help people live in a changing climate? Who should pay? While these questions reflect the big issues of climate politics – about historical responsibility, unequal exposure and the terms of possible futures – they do not tell us a lot about the relationships between and contestations over climate change and finance capitalism.

This book develops an expansive definition of climate finance and a critical framework for analysing its political economy. Drawing from a wide-range of case studies, the authors highlight the diversity, scale and contradictions of climate finance entanglements – from funding renewable energy, putting a price on carbon, responsible investing and financialising resilience.