(Bloomberg) -- A landmark fund launched by the United Arab Emirates a year ago has managed to spend just a small fraction of its cash, as it struggles to find deals suited to its mandate of investing in the energy transition.

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The UAE unveiled plans last December to put $30 billion into the new fund, Alterra, with a goal of mobilizing $250 billion by the end of the decade. So far, Alterra has committed $6.5 billion to seven strategies managed by BlackRock Inc., Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. and TPG Inc. Actual funds spent, however, are significantly lower than that, according to its chief executive officer.

Alterra is trying to create “solutions that are sustainable and scalable,” CEO Majid Al Suwaidi said in an interview in Azerbaijan. “That’s the only way we’re going to really grow these economies.”

For now, though, there’s a lack of investible deals in the energy transition, particularly in developing countries and emerging markets, Al Suwaidi said. He declined to say exactly how much Alterra has spent to date.

The shortage of so-called bankable climate projects has emerged as a theme within private finance that threatens to slow investment. Meanwhile, representatives from almost 200 nations attending the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan are trying to negotiate a deal targeting as much as $1 trillion in annual climate finance commitments.

As countries haggle over the target, bankers have been warning that even if trillions of dollars are raised, they may not be able to spend it.

“Often we find that you might have a project, you might have a financing lined up, but the actual capacity in a country, particularly in emerging markets, just isn’t there,” Marisa Drew, chief sustainability officer at Standard Chartered Plc, said last week in Baku.

Jay Collins, vice chairman of banking and public sector at Citigroup Inc., says the Wall Street firm is seeing a similar trend. “We simply don’t have enough projects,” he said at COP29. “The enabling environment isn’t ready.”

Some of the funds in which Alterra has invested are new and in the early stages of raising money. And asset managers tend to wait for a first round of fund-raising to close before deploying capital.

Alterra was launched at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai last year as a model for so-called blended finance, which is a structure that’s supposed to use public backstops to attract private capital. At its unveiling, hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio called Alterra a “wonderful template” for others to copy.