By Bridget Boulle, Climate Bonds Initiative. Prepared for Responsible-Investor.com
2013 has been a big year for green and climate bonds - it was the year that everyone started talking about them. It was the year that totals outstanding of explicitly green “labelled” bonds doubled, the issuer list diversified and investors in both the mainstream and ESG/SRI markets became interested. Here is short overview of developments.
PARIS - Dr Michael Molitor, Kristian Brüning and Dr Alex Rau today join the Climate Bonds team to support a newly convened supervisory Climate Science Advisory Committee, supervising eligibility criteria for the Climate Bond Standards.
A Climate Science Reference Framework will anchor the Climate Bonds Taxonomy and Climate Bond Standards to projections of needed emission reductions and adaptation measures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and internationally respected climate science research centres.
PARIS - Climate Bonds today announced a timetable for the release of eligibility criteria under the Climate Bond Standards and Certification Scheme. Eligibility criteria are used to determine what assets can be linked to Green Bonds and Climate Bonds.
Criteria are drafted by domain expert committees drawn up from internationally recognized agencies. Once drafted, criteria are subject to public consultation periods before final approval by the Climate Bond Standards Advisory Board*. Criteria are then published online as a public resource.
The European Commission’s Directorate-General of Climate Action has commissioned a project to look at what Europe’s role should be in "shifting private finance towards climate-friendly Investments" – both within the EU and internationally.
As their brief says:
OTTAWA - Export Development Canada (EDC) today issued it's first green bond. They received $300 million of orders within 15 minutes of opening the books, with $500 million of orders on the books before they stopped. Brilliant result!
EDC is Canada's export credit agency; the USD300 million bond is for "loans that will preserve, protect or remediate air, water or soil, or help mitigate climate change". Third party review was by CICERO, at the University of Oslo in Norway.
Media release
London 23 January 2014 - The Climate Bonds Initiative today released its Green Climate Bonds Underwriters League Table for 2013.
Some $10 billion of Green Climate Bonds were issued in 2013, the biggest year yet, and one which saw new issuers, investors and underwriters join the market.
I spent Wednesday sitting in the hallowed halls of the United Nations in New York for the biennual 2014 UN Investor Summit on Climate Risk Summit, hosted by the UN Foundation and Ceres Investor Network on Climate Risk (a Climate Bond Standards Board member). This is the preeminent forum for global investors to discuss the implications of climate change for capital markets - investors representing $22 trillion of assets under management were in the room.
The United Nations Foundation and the Ceres Investor Network on Climate Risk (a Climate Bond Standards Board member) held an Investor Summit at the United Nations in New York. Climate Bonds and Green Bonds were top of the agenda.
One of the speakers was the UN’s top climate change official, Christiana Figueres, and she was very direct. See her press conference here (Christiana is at the 15 minute point).
Today, AAA-rated World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) launched a USD 550mn 18-month floating-rate World Bank Green Bond.
NEW YORK – The International Climate Bond Standards Board today welcomed the release yesterday of the Green Bond Principles by a consortium of international banks led by Citi, JP Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Credit Agricole.
