Event overview

The emergence of environmental and social use-of-proceeds bonds has undoubtedly been a debt capital markets highlight in recent years. Yet the borrower profile in this market segment has gaps it needs to close if green bonds are to take their rightful place in the climate-mitigation agenda.

Primary green bond volumes have risen by leaps and bounds and the market has tremendous potential. This is due to the move to better standards and a positive accommodation between issuers and investors, as ESG becomes embedded in institutional mandates and borrowers start to see execution benefits from labelled issuance.

Corporate issuance now accounts for around a quarter of total GB volumes. Not surprisingly in the market’s early growth spurt, this has been skewed to renewable energy companies and power companies and utilities funding or refinancing renewables projects, and to real estate companies developing or adapting buildings with green credentials.

Astonishingly, European (predominantly Swedish) property companies have issued comparable amounts in Green Bond format, excluding the above, to all other corporate issuers world-wide; many of which from the waste management, pulp and paper, and forestry sectors.

Events Radar’s Adapting the Green Bond Market to Accommodate Brown-Economy Transition Financing Seminar will go where no other Green Bond event has gone: submitting that the GB market should accommodate issuers from the oil and gas, metals and mining, automobile and industrials sectors looking to raise transition financing that need not always be focused on renewables. This remains a highly controversial topic but this need not be the case.

Should the GB ecosystem adapt and accept that companies looking to finance their transition to lower carbon emissions will have a significant impact on the climate-change agenda and should therefore be able to finance such activities via Green Bonds?

Moderated by Keith Mullin, thought-leader and Founder of KM Capital Markets, this Events Radar Seminar will convene panels of experts to discuss these critical topics in open and interactive forum.

Agenda

• 08:30 Registration
• 09:10 Conference Chair’s welcome and opening comments
  Keith Mullin Founder, KM Capital Markets
• 09:15 Opening address
• 09:35 Panel session: Green Assets or Green Issuers?
• » An update on green and sustainable bond activity
• » Are fossil-fuel, mining and other brown-economy companies really welcome in the green and sustainable bond market? On what basis?
• » Is the green bond market morphing from use of proceeds to issuer credentials? What challenges or contradictions might that create for non pure-play issuers?
• » Could we get to a situation where green projects financed in the green bond market are shunned on the basis of the issuer’s sustainable footprint and transition strategy?
• » Who decides and on what basis whether how much emissions mitigation is enough or whether a company’s transition strategy is adequate?
• » Quantifying impact assessment to avoid claims of greenwashing
• » EU taxonomy and green bond standard: genuine game-changers or just another set of standards and guidelines? How will they impact brown-to-green transition financing?
  
  
• 10:30 Break 
• 11:00 Panel session: Reviewing Progress in Green and Sustainability Loans
• » Reviewing the rapidly emerging green and sustainable loan landscape » Weighing up corporate receptivity of use-of-proceeds vs general corporate sustainable facilities in moving the transition needle
• » Has the loan market taken a better approach than the bond market with sustainability performance targets offering related pricing benefits to borrowers? 
• 11:45 Investor panel session
• » Understanding the fixed-income buy-side view on green and sustainable investing as we head to 2020
• » Avoiding buy-side greenwashing: transitioning from tick-box investing to real engagement
• » Encouraging activism around green bond investing and avoiding complacency in the general green ecosyste
• 12:30  Conference Close and networking