Green Finance

OMFIF's 'Focus on green finance' forms part of the finance industry's worldwide campaign against climate change. The series includes podcasts, telephone briefings, commentaries and meetings.

The aim is to provide analysis on developments in green finance and how financing sustainable investments that generate environmental benefits can lead to a low-carbon, climate-resilient and resource-efficient economy.

Meetings

Green bond issuance and other forms of low-carbon finance

The German ministry of finance, Bank for International Settlements, World Bank and OMFIF convened a meeting on how Global Public Investors (sovereign funds, central banks and public pension funds) can help combat climate change. For topics and meeting notes, click here. For a report on the seminar, click here.

Green Finance: Where do we stand?

Andreas Dombret, member of the Bundesbank's executive board, said at an OMFIF City Lecture in Singapore that we still don't appreciate how significant the risks posed by climate change and our responses to them are, and questioned whether financial institutions and markets are suitably taking them into account.

Read the OMFIF report 'Green Finance for Global Public Investors', featuring a foreword from German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

The full text of Dombret's speech can be found here.

Podcasts

To listen to the podcasts, please search for OMFIF on your smartphone's podcast app or via iTunes.

Episode one: What does it mean to be green?
The first recording in the OMFIF podcast series features:

• Bertrand de Mazieres, Director General of Finance, European Investment Bank
• Antony Karembu, Policy and PPP Specialist, African Development Bank
• Danae Kyriakopoulou, Chief Economist and Head of Research, OMFIF

Topics of discussion include sustainable investment and the expansion of the green finance market.

Episode two: GPIs driving the green finance market
In the second episode in OMFIF's series of podcasts on green finance, Ben Robinson discusses the development of the green finance market and the role of Global Public Investors in boosting issuance and propelling demand.

Joël Prohin, head of asset management at Caisse des dépôts et consignations, a French sovereign fund, gives an interview to OMFIF on green financing.

Episode three: The policy and regulation behind green finance
In the third episode of OMFIF's series of podcasts dedicated to the development of the green finance market Marcin Stepan, programmes manager for Europe at OMFIF, is joined by George Papakonstantinou, Greek finance minister between 2009-11 and minister of environment, energy and climate change between 2011-12, and Rupert White, adviser in the UK government's department for business, energy and industrial strategy.

They discuss the existing body of regulations relating to green finance and how policy-makers can do more to promote the sector.

Episode four: Greening up infrastructure
In the last of OMFIF's podcasts dedicated to the development of the green finance market, Marcin Stepan is joined by Sean Kidney, chief executive of the Climate Bonds Initiative.

They discuss infrastructure and green finance, including the impact of building low-carbon, climate-resilient infrastructure, and the challenges in mobilising capital and identifying bankable projects. They consider, too, how to expand the growth of liquid green financial centres worldwide.

Analysis

Green finance for Global Public Investors report

Green finance shapes up
Robert Scharfe, Luxembourg Stock Exchange

Public investors and green bonds
Ben Robinson, OMFIF

Financing a sustainable world
Shaun Kingsbury, UK Green Investment Bank

Solar energy in Europe's south
George Papaconstantinou, former Greek Minister of Energy