Financial Services

Green Finance: Making the Transition to a Climate-Resilient Future

November 14, 2017

Global

November 14, 2017

Global
Renée Friedman

EMEA

Renée Friedman joined The Economist Group in July 2016 as a Managing editor for EMEA.  Her work focuses on thought leadership programmes for the financial services sector.

Prior to joining The Economist Group, Renée worked in a variety of roles: in Economic and Political risk consulting, in finance in the City of London as an Economist, a Macro strategist and a Bond fund manager,  in the  international and UK domestic policy spheres as an Economist to the Treasury Select Committee at the House of Commons and as Senior Economist and Chief Technical Advisor for the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS,  and as an academic, designing and teaching economics courses at universities across London.

Renée has spoken on a variety of panels  and events focused on Russia, Ukraine and other emerging market economies including those for BNE Intellinews, IHS Global Insight, the IMF Poverty Reduction Strategy meetings, and for the UNDP. She has also appeared on CNBC.

Renée holds a PhD in Economics from London Business School, a Masters in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Birmingham, and a Bachelors in International Trade and Development from the London School of Economics & Political Science.  She is also a Prince 2 certified project manager. In addition to her native English, Renée speaks Russian.

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How the bond market is leading the way

Green finance is the financing of investments that provide environmental benefits in the broader context of environmentally sustainable development. It includes all forms of investment, both debt and equity, which protect the environment, conserve natural resources and help mitigate or adapt to a changing climate. It is used in the implementation of ‘green’ infrastructure plans which aid in delivering energy security and other productivity increasing measures such as improved human health.
 
The main green finance instrument is a green bond. A green bond is a fixed-income instrument where the capital raised or revenue stream connected to the bond must be for projects that benefit the environment.
 
Climate-aligned bonds, bonds used to finance - or re-finance - projects needed to address climate change, can be labelled or unlabelled. Unlabelled climate-aligned bonds are estimated at $674bn. Only a small portion of climate-aligned bonds, approximately $221bn2, are labelled as green bonds.

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