A financing commitment is not money spent on the asset

themePublished 19 October 20262 min readmulti asset

Key points

• Advanced-economy public-finance commitments for critical minerals were around 65 billion dollars in 2025, over four times the 2023 level.
• The IEA says a considerable gap remains between those commitments and actual disbursements.
• A project company spends committed equity and debt on a wasting construction period before any toll or offtake is paid.

What is going on

The executive summary says governments are taking a more active role in reducing project risk. Commitments reached around 65 billion dollars in 2025, from a base more than four times lower in 2023. It then says the gap to disbursement will decide whether supply diversifies. Tools it lists include grants, equity, concessional loans, guarantees, contracts for difference, price floors and offtake backstops. Each tool moves a different risk: construction cost, price, or volume. None of them is evidence that the project has drawn the money.

Why it matters

Project finance isolates an asset in a company that pays lenders from that asset's contracts. Until the asset operates, the cash goes out. Delays extend the period in which interest accrues and no revenue arrives. Refinancing risk appears when the construction loan has to become a longer loan against a project that is late or against a price that missed the downside case. An infrastructure fund that holds the equity reports a valuation in the meantime. The September 2026 BIS Quarterly Review, in its private-credit article, describes lending against cash flows and intangible assets as part of how private credit financed the digital economy after 2020. A valuation of a project that is not yet producing cash is not the same object as a disbursed construction invoice. This note does not add a private-credit yield or an assets-under-management figure. The BIS page did not print one.

What to watch

For minerals, the IEA has already named the indicator: disbursements, not commitments. For a single project, the indicators are drawdowns, mechanical completion and the start of the offtake. A second close of financing is a warning that the first close was not enough, or a planned stage. The documents distinguish those cases. A headline rarely does.

Risks

Leverage that is tolerable against a signed offtake is not tolerable against a delay. Public commitments can be cancelled before they disburse. A contract for difference protects price and transfers the cost to whoever funds the difference. Liquidity terms in a fund can promise an exit the project cannot provide. The asset-class note on illiquid valuation is the companion for that last point.

Who is financing the theme

Public markets can fund a listed developer. A project company can fund one asset. A fund can fund a portfolio of assets that are not listed. The theme is the same demand story in all three, and the path from demand to a cash distribution is not. Cost of capital is set at the financing. It does not fall just because the structural story is popular.