A dull shade of green

摘要

A modest, but important, addition to climate finance REDUCING the risks of climate change is not a technological problem. There are many ways to generate electricity, drive cars or grow crops without emitting much carbon dioxide-but they are expensive. According to the International Energy Agency, $13.5 trillion must be invested in low-carbon energy by 2035 to reduce emissions. That sort of money can be found only On capital markets. Yet investors' appetite for green schemes is unproven. Hence growing interest in one of the more promising efforts to encourage it: "green bonds". These instruments look like any other fixed-income offering except that the proceeds are invested in environmentally friendly projects. Estimating the size of the market is hard: according to Climate Bonds Initiative (cbi), an ngo, between $10 billion and $30 billion of bonds related to renewable-energy projects have been issued. Bonds that are explicitly advertised as green, mostly issued by the World Bank and other multilateral lenders, are easier to count. Around $5 billion-worth have been issued; by one estimate, they could amount to $30 billion by 2015.