Together they mean that the risk-retum profile of low-carbon investments is often less attractive than their fossil fuel-based equivalents. Scaling-up financing to a low-carbon economy will not happen spontaneously. It requires strong policy and price signals to ensure that low-carbon and energy efficiency investments offer a sufficiently attractive risk-adjusted return compared to available alternatives (IEA, 2014). These are presented in the shaded part of Table 2.1 and are briefly discussed in the following section, they are the subject of other chapters in this report.