The Solar Technical Working Group under the Climate Bond Standard and Certification Scheme have today published criteria for solar assets for bond certification.
The Massachusetts AA+ green bond I mentioned last week got a lot of coverage on release this week - even the WSJ ran the story. But there was a twist: it seems the State had to scale back the total $1.1bn GO offering to $670m on tepid demand, but the green bond bit was 30% oversubscribed.
You're invited to two events:
A presentation by DNV on 'How Climate Bonds certification works', 2 May 2013, 10.30am
Recent climate bonds from the IFC and KEXIM show that there is appetite among institutional investors for this type of asset class. However, uncertainty remains about what "climate" or “green” means, particularly where corporate issuers are concerned.
Energy efficiency is a key investment area for the shift to a low-carbon economy. A Technical Working Group has been convened to develop eligibility criteria for the certification of energy efficiency related bonds under the Climate Bonds Standard.
The first meeting, via teleconference, was held on 20 July 2012.
This Working Group is focusing on the built environment; a separate Working Group will be convened to look at industrial and manufacturing energy efficiency.
Across Europe and a number of other regions bank recapitalisation pressures have led to a reduction in business and project lending - and thus reduced renewable energy lending.
This is a problem because the bulk of project finance (95% globally) comes from bank lending.
The development of a market for securitized renewable energy and energy efficiency assets and loans, allowing banks to quickly recycle limited loan capital, is going to be vital to ensuring banks deliver the project finance needed as we “green” energy systems.
