A slew of recent green bonds to finance water, transport and grid connection projects highlights the growing demand for climate-friendly infrastructure.
The fact that most of these issues were significantly over-subscribed suggests that institutional investors regard these projects as high-quality assets, offering healthy financial returns and enhancing the sustainability of their portfolios.
The Paris Agreement on climate change, agreed in December, suggests that demand for greener infrastructure will continue to soar.
At the same time, pressure is mounting for better disclose of climate-related investment risks, and many major investors have already committed to report on the environmental impacts of their holdings and, in some cases, to divest from carbon-intensive companies.
The full implications of the Paris Agreement and how the bond market is responding to the need for large-scale green infrastructure investment will be discussed at the forthcoming Green Bonds Europe conference in London on 20 June.
James Cameron, chairman of the UK's Overseas Development Institute and former chairman of Climate Change Capital, will clarify the investment implications of the global 2030 emissions targets and Sean Kidney, CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative, will outline a new project to attract more institutional investor capital to climate-resilient infrastructure.
A third keynote will be given by Jeroen Dicker, group treasurer of grid operator TenneT, which is rapidly becoming one of the major corporate players in this fast-moving market.
Other major issues to be discussed include: how green bonds could revitalise the UN's Clean Development Mechanism, the evolution from green bonds to sustainability bonds, defining what is 'green', and the outlook for new issues from emerging markets.
Among the financial institutions presenting are: Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, Citi, Credit Agricole CIB, HSBC, JP Morgan, AP4, Zurich Insurance, Ceres, CalSTRS, Kommuninvest, and Instituto de Credit Oficial.
Green Bonds Europe, 20 June, London
For more details and to register, please see:
www.environmental-finance.com/bonds16