The 2018 State of the Market report marks the seventh annual stocktake of green bonds and green finance in Canada, produced in partnership with the Climate Bonds Initiative.
Bonds and Climate Change: The state of the market in 2018 presents the findings of Climate Bonds Initiative’s research of climate-aligned issuers, conducted between April and June 2018. It identifies issuers who generate at least 75% of their revenues from ‘green’ business and looks at the diversity of bond structures used in the green bond market.
Scaling Up Green Bond Markets for Sustainable Development: A strategic guide for the public sector to stimulate private sector market development for green bonds argues that with the right support in place USD 1 trillion of green bonds could be issued a year by 2020 – providing a significant contribution to closing the investment gap for climate-friendly infrastructure in both developed economies and emerging markets. It argues for several sets of policy actions to support and enable the green bond market to grow:
- Market building activities are the low cost means to enable green bond markets to grow: Establish green project pipeline, strengthen local bond markets, strategic public green bond issuance and development of green bond standards.
- Proven support tools provide an additional boost to the market at its early stage: Strategic public green bond investment, credit enhancement, tax incentives and development of instruments to aggregate assets and structure risks.
- Innovative ideas are being trialled in some countries: Adjust risk weightings for green investments, preference green investments in central bank operations.
This paper Scaling up Rooftop Solar Power in India: The Potential of Solar Municipal Bonds proposes the use of municipal bonds to support the scale-up of rooftop solar in India, and details how such bonds could be designed and implemented.
This paper Sustainable Land Bonds: How Governments can Finance Climate Commitments and Strengthen Rural Economies shows how tropical forest countries can access large amounts of inexpensive capital through issuing Sustainable Land Bonds (SLBs) that can be used to finance the largescale transition to sustainable and low-carbon land management practices.