Just like being there in person ... (ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration).
Thank you to our co-host, CDC Climat, for organizing this. See below or click here. (Cliquez ici pour la version française)
PDFs available at http://www.cdcclimat.com/Conference-Climate-bonds-and.html
Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a new Green bank in his annual 'State of the State' address yesterday. He said the bank would focus on leveraging private sector capital for clean energy.
This is an excellent development. As we've argued since our inception, special purpose State financial institutions will play important enabling roles in leveraging private investment for public policy purposes.
- I’m in Qatar, a place slightly smaller than Connecticut, prosaically described in my travel guide app as “mainly flat and barren desert, covered with loose sand and gravel”. There’s not a lot of desert left in its capital, Doha, just a vast sea of choked-up highways (serious SUV traffic!) and low-rise buildings punctuated by monumentalist skyscrapers, all thanks to huge natural gas resources. Pity we're going to have to leave a large part of that gas in the ground if we're going to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Covered bonds are one the quiet heroes of financial instruments. With some $3.2 trillion outstanding, this is a huge market - and it's one that has performed well over the past few years of financial turmoil. Covered bonds are highly regulated financial instruments designed by governments to channel capital into areas of policy priority, notably housing. They can also be used to channel much-needed bank lending into renewable energy.
