By Rozalia Walencik
Structured Finance Associates partnering with Los Angeles County, has issued an $6.9m PACE bond(Property Assessed Clean Energy bond) with proceeds financing energy efficient improvements to the “d2Dusit constance pasadena” project. Structured Finance worked with Celtic Bank to arrange the funding.
Join us for a presentation and discussion of our Bonds & Climate Change : The State of the Market 2014 report, commissioned by HSBC. Download the report here.
July saw the first “labeled” green bond in the Asian market - from Taiwan’s ASE. Great news.
Analysing the green bond media coverage in July brings an obvious conclusion: the momentum is growing. We now find ourselves in a position of having to heavily filter the coverage for this digest. – and this month we have chosen 28 media stories worth sharing with you.
By Bridget Boulle
UK retailer Sainsbury’s recently announced that it’s joining the green debt space with the first ‘green loan’ to invest in carbon reduction and sustainability projects.
The loan will be used to finance renewables, energy efficiency, water use management and carbon reduction, some of which are part of the company’s Project Graphite – a plan to invest in various technologies such as photovoltaics and LED lighting in their stores.
I’m in Cambodia, visiting the amazing Ankgor Wat, ancient religious centre of a city that apparently had a population of half a million people in 1200 AD. The temple’s bas-reliefs are full of triumphal armies, marching through exquisite carvings of trees and forests. They liked their green.
We haven’t yet seen a lot of green bond action in Asia – just Kexim a year ago – but things may be about to change.
The Dutch fund manager ACTIAM has joined the Climate Bonds Standard Industry Working Group. ACTIAM used to be called SNS Asset Management (SNS AM).
ACTIAM has EUR 44.2 billion of assets under management (@ Dec 2013). It has a long history of using a responsible investment approach across its activities. ACTIAM already has several hundred million of Euro green bonds on its books, for a wide range of clients.
LONDON, 17 July 2014 – The Climate Bonds Initiative today launches its 2014 market sizing report “Bonds and Climate Change: the state of the market in 2014”. The report was commissioned by the HSBC Climate Change Centre of Excellence.
> Download it: A4 version (printable) ... or ... magazine style A3 version (much nicer but hard to print)
The report finds that:
By Beate Sonerud, Climate Bonds analyst
Neo Solar Power Corp, the largest solar cell maker in Taiwan, recently issued a convertible bond of US$120mn.
FinanceAsia reported that it is a 3-year bond, with no coupon or yield, but a 10% conversion premium (NT$39.05; stock price at issuance date NT$35.50). The conversion premium was somewhat low, as guidance indicated 10-15%. Proceeds of the bond will be used to buy solar sell raw materials such as silicon wafers.
We knew it was coming, but the size is a surprise. Go Germany!
German’s development bank, KfW (Kredit für Wiederaufbau) has just issued its inaugural Green Bond, at a whopper EUR 1.5 billion (£2.03 billion). If you want make a splash, that’s the way to do it.
Interest rate is 0.375%; yes, that is very very low, like all AAA German government bonds ... this really is the time to finance a rebuild of the world's infrastructure as green!
