Green bonds are starting to come in many different shades as the size of the market for securities designed to benefit the environment is on track to double again.
Those are two of the conclusions that emerged from the industry’s biggest annual gathering this week in London. Issuance may surge to $206bn this year from $93bn in 2016, according to Moody’s Corp.
As more bonds are issued by a wider variety of institution, investors are starting to track exactly how green those securities really are. So-called dark green bonds adhere to the strictest environmental criteria, while ones described as having a lighter shade can be used to back a broader array of projects. Financial innovation in creating new types of green bond will keep demand growing, said Michael Sheren, an adviser to the Bank of England.
“There’s about $100 trillion of institutional money in the world, and less than 1 percent is invested in anything green,” said Sheren, who is co-chair of the Group of 20’s Green Finance Study Group. “We have to make it palatable to institutional investors. Green bonds are the best instrument to do this.”
Following are other trends that emerged at the conference hosted by Climate Bonds Initiative, one of the organizations that establishes guidelines for the unregulated green-bond market:
The first covered and mortgage-backed bonds emerged last year with differing levels of greenness. This year, prices for green securities may start to command a premium to regular bonds -- if metrics and structures can justify it.
“We need to go beyond the green labeled bond market to turn the world’s infrastructure green,” said Michael Wilkins, managing director of S&P’s infrastructure ratings. “This would look at environmental impact, net benefit as well as resilience and adaptation.”
S&P Global Inc. is working on an evaluation tool with a scoring system that would go beyond labeling a bond green and not-green. It will quantify a green bond’s transparency, governance and contribution to mitigation or adaptation to climate change. S&P is planning to introduce it in the first quarter.
Two green bond exchange-traded funds have debuted. The first was by Lynxor on March 2 and is listed in Luxembourg. The second was introduced four days later by VanEck Vectors. It trades on the New York Stock Exchange.
Green bonds may be linked to equities or other structures this year, said Natixis SA. The French investment bank has created green bonds that pay out at maturity depending on the performance of an equity index instead of issuing a periodic coupon like traditional bonds do. It’s also working on green fixed-income instruments with a synthetic coupon, a structure that mimics the cash flow of a bond.
“It requires the investors to hold the bond until maturity,” said Orith Azoulay, head of SRI research at Natixis. “We’re seeing interest from bond investors trying to get some kind of yield pickup.”
Moody’s Vice President Henry Shilling said the green bond market grew 120 percent last year and will more than double again. His prediction is more punchy than the estimate from Bloomberg New Energy Finance that the green bond market will grow to $123 billion this year from $95bn in 2016.
The growth is “reflecting strong China-based issuance and momentum from the Paris Climate agreement,” Moody’s said in a report.
Poland issued the world’s first sovereign green bond in December. France followed with a 7 billion-euro ($7.4bn) issue in January. Nigeria’s planning to sell domestic naira-denominated climate debt this month. Those countries are in the vanguard of a sovereign green bond movement that expected to be joined this year by at least nine other governments.
