Climate Bonds Blog

Eversheds law partner Michele Thomas, speaking at this week's Environmental Bonds Conference in London, said that the banks her firm has been working with on renewable energy transactions are preparing to securitise those loans and sell their exposure via green bond structures. Eversheds is one of the top ten law firms in the UK.

Environmental Finance reports that she said “All the work we’re doing in certain technologies – for example solar – is done with a view to securitisation,” she said. “The banks realise they can’t continue to fund on a traditional project finance basis – they need an exit.”

A recent report prepared for Barclays by Accenture has placed the need for the standardisation of green bonds front and centre for efforts to finance a low carbon economy.

The report estimated that up to €2.9 trillion of procurement and development capital will be needed for the roll-out of low carbon technologies across the EU25 by 2020. They estimate that 'green' bonds in the form of asset-back securities could account for €1.4 trillion of this total. The figure includes the sum of likely project finance debt, asset finance term loans, asset lease financing, and primary bonds that could be securitised into green asset-backed securities.

In what some people read as a sign of pent-up retail interest, UK green energy supplier Ecotricity has said that they're recent green bond offering to customers has been so successful they're going to become a permanent fixture.

The first bond was two times oversubscribed, raising £10 million. See the full story an 'Environment Finance'.

Ireland has set out plans to create a green version of its job-spawning International Financial Services Centre (IFSC), and hopes that it could create 7,000 jobs over the next five years.

A lot of the initiatives are aimed at the carbon markets and green equity funds, but Paul Harris, head of natural resources risk management at Bank of Ireland Global Markets, and a member of the Green International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) Working Group, has one eye on future environmental bonds markets.