EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF GREEN HOUSING FINANCE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: A SCOPING REVIEW OF CONCEPTS AND INSTRUMENTS

The increasing need for sustainable housing solutions for emerging and developing countries spotlights the need for environmentally sustainable financing. Therefore, green buildings and financing have evolved separately to address this need. This scoping review explored global literature to provide a synthesised definition of Green Housing Finance (GHF), including the various concepts and themes dominating this solution. Scopus, Google Scholar and Google were searched for eligible peer-reviewed articles. Thirty-eight papers published over 20 years (2003-2023) were analysed. Atlas-ti's Sankey visualisation and descriptive reporting summarised the studies to understand and describe GHF comprehensively. The study found that GHF in global literature refers to housing finance innovations that address the energy efficiency needs of households while mitigating the climate change impacts of housing provision. Also, some of the most significant GHF instruments identified in research literature include Green Loans, Subsidies, Green Credit, and Climate Finance. Concerning the geographical reach or impact of GHF, the study finds that research in developing markets is sparse and limited to South Africa.