Opening speech at the launch of the Climate Bonds Standard by co-founder, Nick Silver
Let me deal with each word in turn: Climate, Bonds and Standards
1. Climate.
Everyone seems to have forgotten about climate change – it’s dropped right down or even off the agenda. We have been distracted by rather serious problems elsewhere.
Climate Bond Standard released, open for business; Goal to Assure Integrity of Green Claims for Investors, Governments
LONDON TODAY – The Climate Bonds Initiative today released the final approved text of the prototype Climate Bond Standard. See http://standards.climatebonds.net/
The Standard is a screening tool for investors and governments to support investment in delivering a Low Carbon Economy. Bonds complying with the Standard will be certified as ‘Climate Bonds’— a mark that assures their contribution to the delivery of a Low Carbon Economy.
And then you get snippets to cheer you up:
- China’s State Council is studying the introduction of a green tax. They're also planning to cut emissions the unit of GDP by 16% within 4 years; that's very ambitious.
- Australia's Parliament passed carbon tax legislation. And their $10 billion green investment bank (they're calling it a Clean Energy Finance Corporation) should be through Parliament mid-next year and operational in 2013.
Earlier this month two news items rocked me, and I'm still rocking.
The first was the US Government's CO2 Analysis Centre reporting that global emissions had grown 5.9% in the past year. That's the highest ever recorded; it was chilling news. A friend called to say he was going ahead with buying land in Canada for his kids; not an option for most people.
We welcome three new members of Climate Bonds Advisory Panel:
Abyd Karmali, a Managing Director and Global Head of Carbon Markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He serves on Bank of America’s Environmental Council and has worked for two decades on climate change and the carbon markets. He is also President of the Carbon Markets & Investors Association and Chairman of Just Energy, a new Oxfam initiative focused on access to energy.
The Climate Bonds Standard and Certification Scheme will be formally launched in the London at 4pm on 24 November, 2011. The Scheme will provide assurance for investors about the low carbon integrity of bonds for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Speakers at the launch will be:
Greg Barker MP, Minister of State, UK Department of Energy & Climate ChangeBill Lockyer, California State Treasurer (by video)Christian Kjaer, CEO European Wind Energy AssociationJames Cameron, Climate Change CapitalSteve Lambert, GM Capital Markets, National Australia BankNick Robins, HSBC Centre for Climate Change
> China Green Munis: As a market test, the Chinese Govt has announced it will allow 2 cities and 2 provinces to issue local govt bonds for environmental projects. See http://goo.gl/OKaPh and http://goo.gl/uIG0H. That's right, green and climate bonds, as foreshadowed in a number of mayoral speeches over the past year. It's still unclear whether overseas investors wanting to have an exposure to Chinese debt will be allowed to buy.
Guest commentator Jonathan Johns of ClimateChangeMatters writes ....
1. The UK's Green Deal legislation went through Parliament this week - Hurrah! It allows residential retrofit loans to be repaid via electricity bills, and ties the loan to the house rather than householder. It will significantly reduce the risks of default, eventually allowing investment grade (climate) bonds to be issued against portfolios of these loans. It's a model that will need to be adopted in other countries if we're going to reduce emissions from the housing sector - but, it won't by itself solve the problem of take-up. That's the separate problem of 'adoption' (we're working on it).
The European Investment Bank (the EIB), the EU's bank, is the world's largest clean energy lender. True! Yet their lending is not (yet) enough to achieve the transition to a low-carbon economy the EU needs and has mandated by 2050.
I'm sitting in a meeting in Luxembourg with their management team and 27 member board, in their classically European Union égalité-style board room - concentric circles of seating, all fitted out with push button mikes, translation headphones - and a beautiful green forest just outside floor-to-ceiling glass windows on two sides.
This is a huge bank, nearly three times the size of the World Bank.
