Green Bonds in Brief offers an in-depth guide into Green Bonds.
Forty billion dollars in 2014. One hundred billion in 2015. That’s how much funding Green Bonds are projected to provide in the next year and a half. Green Bonds offer an opportunity for both investors and issuers to encourage sustainable growth through green projects such as energy efficiency, renewable power, and cleaner transit.
Green Bonds in Brief: Risk, Reward, and Opportunity, authored by As You Sow and graduate students at the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs, is available for download now.
To learn more about Green Bonds, visit www.gogreenbonds.org, a new resource from As You Sow and the Climate Bonds Initiative.
New Report Offers Cities Guidance on Accessing the Vast Green Bond Market
The U.S. branch of the Green City Bonds Coalition, a group of global organizations working to facilitate green bond expansion, has released The Green Muni Bonds Playbook. This fifteen page report provides guidance for cities and other public entities that issue municipal bonds to pay for infrastructure such as energy, water and transportation. It describes the state of the market, the benefits of issuing green bonds, how the market defines what is green and the steps cities need to take to access this growing market. It also includes case studies from a number of cities.
Read the full report
Read the press release
Member organizations of the U.S. Green City Bonds Coalition include As You Sow, C40 Cities, CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project), Ceres, Climate Bonds Initiative, and Natural Resources Defense Council.
Watch the July 23 2014 webinar
Our Green Bonds: Financing a Sustainable Future webinar covers issues such as the latest trends in green fixed-income financing, integrating green bonds into a portfolio, how green bonds compare to regular bonds, the impact of rising interest rates, and developments in product standardization and secondary markets.
Watch the February 18 2014 webinar
Read our Q&A from the first Green Bonds webinar
Green Bonds will help deliver trillions of dollars of investment in low-carbon infrastructure that is needed to stabilize emissions. They are an ideal financial vehicle for the challenge of climate change in that their ability to scale and be deployed quickly matches the urgency of climate change.
In 2014, As You Sow hosted a series of webinars to focus on this important issue. The first webinar, available above, is a detailed discussion of critical issues:
What are Green Bonds?
Green Bonds are issued by corporations, governments, development banks, and agencies to fund projects with greenhouse gas reduction or other sustainability purposes, including renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable waste management, low carbon transportation, water conservation, and much more.
How much has been invested?
With over $10 billion in issuances in 2013, the global Green Bond market is expected to double in 2014. This booming sector is being hastened and facilitated by investment banks who see the potential in the market.
What institutions are issuing Green Bonds?
Green Bonds have been issued by the World Bank, European Investment Bank, and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for years, but the market is rapidly expanding with issuances from private sector organizations such as Bank of America Merrill Lynch, MidAmerican Energy, France’s EDF, and others.
What are the Green Bonds Principles?
A consortium of banks recently released the Green Bonds Principles, which provide voluntary guidance and process tools for green bonds issuance.
The first webinar features experts from the International Finance Corporation, the largest and first issuer of Green Bonds; the Climate Bonds Initiative, the leading NGO in the green bond space; and the Massachusetts State Treasury, the first US state to issue green bonds.
