The story of the Nordic green bond market is about many small and many repeat issuers creating a big impact. Nordic issuers embraced the green bond market when it was still in its infancy, banks in the region fund many sustainable assets via loans, and Nordic players are also at the forefront in promoting market integrity: demonstrating best practice in external reviews (read the practical guide on impact reporting for Nordic public sector green bond issuers), pushing investor standards and leading the international dialogue.
The Green Bond Market in the Nordics, published by the Climate Bonds Initiative, provides an overview of the Nordic region’s green bond market by issuer type, financed sectors and countries, covering Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. It also identifies Nordic issuers of vanilla bonds in industry sectors conducive to green bond issuance and seeks to outline potential avenues to future market growth and development.
The report concludes that increasing support for the market through investors, stock exchanges, cost-focused incentives for smaller issuers and the continued use of aggregation to pool funding requirements should help the Nordic markets to continue to grow and innovate, and that sovereign issuance from the region would further support climate action.