Green Bonds Market Tops $36.6 Billion, 3 Times 2013
The Green Bonds Initiative has released figures for the green bonds market in 2014, and its good news all around, with $36.6 billion worth of bonds issued by 73 different issuers.
That’s more than three times the figure from 2013.
Speaking to BusinessGreen at the time of the news, Sean Kidney, chief executive of the Climate Bonds Initiative, said that he expected the green bonds market to reach $100 billion in 2015.
“I’m very confident we can get a $50bn and cautiously optimistic that we will get a $100bn [market] – that’s what we’re working to as a target,” he said. “Some markets are going to grow very fast from a small base, such as the US municipal market, which we expect to spill over into more issuance in Europe.”
Although, that’s not really news, as Kidney said the same thing in October, at the release of his company’s figures for the third quarter of 2014.
“The league table shows that Crédit Agricole, BAML and SEB were the main drivers of the growth of the ‘labelled’ market in the last quarter that saw 28 green bonds issued,” said Sean Kidney. “We predict USD100 billion of issuance in 2015 and green bonds to go mainstream in 2016.”
2014’s growth took the total amount of green bonds outstanding to $53.2 billion by the end of 2014.
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The big development banks are still leading the way, issuing the most green bonds for the year — 44%, totaling $16 billion.
There were new entrants to the market, primarily in the form of national development banks that, Climate Bonds Initiative say, “had been waiting in the wings for the right moment to issue a green bond.” These include banks such as Germany’s KfW, France’s AFD, and the Netherlands NWB Bank.
Across the board, the top 10 green bond issuers of 2014 were:
But expect to see that top 10 list to change over the next few years, as the market continues to grow and old heavyweights face challenges from new arrivals. For example, in September of 2014, one of the world’s largest banks, Barclays, announced that it intends to invest a minimum of £1 billion in green bonds over the next year, more than doubling its current portfolio of £430 million.
And, according to Kidney, still speaking to BusinessGreen, looks to see green bonds markets pop up in places outside the traditional US and Europe zones: For example, China.
“We have a lot of people queuing up in China to issue green bonds,” Kidney said. “[The agreement] reinforced very strongly the overall environment, which makes it easier for the green bond market to grow and become a more central part of the solution.”
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