Nordic green bond issuers’ views on the upcoming EU Green Bond Standard

Q3 Decision Sciences

ACRN Journal of Finance and Risk Perspectives Pub Date : 2021-01-01 DOI:10.35944/jofrp.2021.10.1.012

Linn Björkholm, O. Lehner

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

The green bond market is growing and becoming increasingly important in green finance and for the transition to a low-carbon economy. Still, the green bond market is to a large extent unstandardised. There is no commonly agreed definition of the term ‘green’. This has been seen as one of the biggest challenges when it comes to the development of the green bond market. The need of a unified EU standard has been raised and as an effect the establishment of the EU Green Bond Standard is now in development. However, new standards might not only bring advantages, but also challenges. Striking the right balance of strictness might be hard. The research has been conducted through qualitative method with semi-structured interviews. Nine interviews were held during November and December 2020. The data was then analysed through thematic coding in order to find patterns of meaning. The results show that Nordic green bond issuers overall are positive towards the EU Green Bond Standard. The EU GBS has a good aim, to harmonise and enlarge the green bond market. However, the standard brings challenges that are to a large extent known challenges which the EU GBS aims to address, such as labour intensive reporting processes, lack of initiative and reputational risk. Also, it is argued that the standard is not fair and applicable for all the countries and companies. Countries national laws may not always go hand in hand with the standard. For example, the requirements for green buildings are seen as challenging in the Nordics. If these challenges are not taken into consideration, Nordic green bond issuers fear that the market will not grow, but instead decrease. Additionally, Nordic green bond issuers argue the adoption of the EU GBS is not a guarantee for issuers. Bigger institutes are seen to be early adopters. For other issuers investor requirement and positive impact on their company reputation is seen as the key drivers for adoption of the standard.

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北欧绿色债券发行人对即将出台的欧盟绿色债券标准的看法

绿色债券市场正在发展壮大，在绿色金融和向低碳经济转型中变得越来越重要。然而，绿色债券市场在很大程度上是不规范的。“环保”一词并没有一个公认的定义。这被视为绿色债券市场发展面临的最大挑战之一。统一欧盟标准的必要性已经被提出，因此欧盟绿色债券标准的建立正在进行中。然而，新标准可能不仅带来优势，也带来挑战。在严格程度上取得适当的平衡可能很难。本研究采用半结构化访谈的定性方法进行。在2020年11月和12月期间进行了9次访谈。然后通过主题编码对数据进行分析，以找到意义模式。结果表明，北欧绿色债券发行人总体上对欧盟绿色债券标准持积极态度。欧盟GBS有一个很好的目标，即协调和扩大绿色债券市场。然而，该标准带来的挑战在很大程度上是欧盟GBS旨在解决的已知挑战，例如劳动密集型报告流程、缺乏主动性和声誉风险。此外，有人认为该标准不公平，适用于所有国家和公司。国家法律可能并不总是与标准相一致。例如，对绿色建筑的要求在北欧被视为具有挑战性。如果不考虑这些挑战，北欧绿色债券发行者担心市场不会增长，而是会萎缩。此外，北欧绿色债券发行人认为，采用欧盟GBS对发行人来说并不是一种保证。较大的研究机构被认为是早期采用者。对于其他发行人而言，投资者要求和对其公司声誉的积极影响被视为采用该标准的关键驱动因素。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

ACRN Journal of Finance and Risk Perspectives Business, Management and Accounting-Business and International Management

CiteScore

3.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

14 weeks

期刊介绍： This journal is special because it aims to provide an outlet for inter-disciplinary and more in-depth research papers with various methodological approaches from the broad fields of Finance, Risk and Accounting. The target group of this journal are academics who want to get a better understanding of the interconnectedness of their fields by acknowledging the methods and theories used in closely related areas. The JOFRP thus aims to overcome the self-imposed paradigmatic boundaries and reflexive isomorphisms of the individual, typically rather narrow fields and invites new and combined perspectives from the fields of Finance, Risk and Accounting. Despite its methodological, topical and disciplinary openness - it does so with a strong focus on academic rigour and robustness. Articles can vary in size and approaches but all articles will be strictly double-blind peer reviewed and authors are frequently invited to discuss the ramifications of their articles in the global FRAP and SSFII conferences.