Ireland eyeing environmental bonds

Ireland has set out plans to create a green version of its job-spawning International Financial Services Centre (IFSC), and hopes that it could create 7,000 jobs over the next five years.

A lot of the initiatives are aimed at the carbon markets and green equity funds, but Paul Harris, head of natural resources risk management at Bank of Ireland Global Markets, and a member of the Green International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) Working Group, has one eye on future environmental bonds markets.

“It’s about understanding what’s going to drive green finance”, he told Environmental Finance – (who also tell me that Harris has registered to attend their Environmental Bonds 2011 conference, at which I’m speaking). Harris says that the goal is to create “a domicile that’s conducive to green bond issuance”.

Perhaps the Environmental Bonds 2012 conference will be hosted by Dublin?