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  4. Which sectors get air quality funding?

Which sectors get air quality funding?

A breakdown of the sectors receiving the most funding for air quality, including transport, energy and water. Part of The State of Global Air Quality Funding 2026, the only analysis of international development funding for clean air in 2020-2024.

  1. Report home
  2. Key findings
  3. Trends in air quality funding
  4. Top funders for air quality
  5. Forms of funding
  6. Where is funding going?
  7. Which sectors get air quality funding?
  8. Funding for fossil fuels vs air quality
  9. Deep dive: Southeast Asia
  10. Funding focused on super pollutants
  11. Recommendations for development donors
  1. Report home
  2. Key findings
  3. Trends in air quality funding
  4. Top funders for air quality
  5. Forms of funding
  6. Where is funding going?
  7. Which sectors get air quality funding?
  8. Funding for fossil fuels vs air quality
  9. Deep dive: Southeast Asia
  10. Funding focused on super pollutants
  11. Recommendations for development donors

Transport drives air quality funding in a highly concentrated sectoral landscape

Investment in transport made up 62% ($77 billion) of total air quality funding flows in 2020-2024. Other and cross-sectoral projects were the second-largest category (12%) and energy the third (11%). This is attributable to the inclusion criteria for renewable energy projects in our methodology, which requires projects to be explicitly designed as direct and immediate replacements for fossil fuel energy generation.1 Transport has a near-identical share when examining only outdoor air quality funding, with the sector totalling 63% for 2020-2024. This indicates that the sector’s prominence is not simply driven by air quality co-benefits attached to wider transport investments: transport also dominates the pool of finance in which improving outdoor air quality is an explicit project objective.

Water and wastewater is the second-largest sector for outdoor air quality funding (10%) in 2020-2024. Energy attracted just 5%, suggesting donors are not focused on energy to explicitly improve air quality, and that the air quality improvements brought by these projects are a co-benefit of the renewable energy transition.

While transport investment is vital for improving air quality, its dominance means overall funding trends are sensitive to investment patterns in a single sector, while far less finance reaches interventions addressing other sources of air pollution.

Railways and public transport drive transport’s leading funding role

These subsectors made up 42% ($53 billion) of total air quality funding in 2020-2024. This dominance underscores the critical roles of railways and public transport infrastructure in improving air quality. Projects in these subsectors are also inherently more expensive due to their scale. Funding volume, however, should not be the only metric for success. Projects with more localised sites or cheaper inputs, such as municipal landfill sites or farm-level agricultural solutions, are also key to improving air quality.

References

1Clean Air Fund & CPI. 2026. The State of Global Air Quality Funding 2026 Methodology.