Media-digest

Compiled by Rozalia Walencik for the Climate Bonds Initiative

November was a good month for the green bonds market: the largest month of issuance to date, the first green bond from Mexico and a first green bond from Indian development bank IDBI.

There was also a flurry of banks with USD1 billion or more mandates including Credit Agricole, HSBC, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, KfW and IFC. We also had some prominent joiners to the Climate Bonds Partners programme including Blackrock, Thomson Reuters, EY and IDBI.

With the month’s breaking news of the inaugural green bond from Agricultural Bank of China, we begin to see more and more Chinese titles pointing to green bonds.

The major green bonds media story in July was the launch of our Bonds and Climate Change: the state of the market in 2015 report. The report first launched in Frankfurt with further launches in Mexico City, New York and London. Another key story was the first labelled green bond from a Chinese issuer (issued in the international dollar market).

In June, journalists highlighted the game-changing role that China will play when it finally embraces the green bond market, as well as the need for universal standards in the green space. We also saw quite a few sceptical green bond stories that raised the question of ‘additionality’ and whether the recent flat pace of growth spells the end of the ‘green bond explosion’.