中文
“China’s carbon dioxide emissions will strive to reach the peak by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.” With the proposal of China’s goal of carbon peak and carbon neutralization, the development of green finance business including carbon finance will usher in great opportunities.
The fourth quarter 2020 regular meeting of the monetary policy committee of the people’s Bank of China released on the 29th clearly proposed to improve the green financial system with the goal of promoting the realization of carbon peak and carbon neutralization.
Data from the central bank show that China’s green loans have maintained a rapid growth since this year. At the end of the third quarter, the balance of domestic and foreign currency green loans in China increased by 16.3% over the beginning of the year, higher than the overall loan growth in the same period. As of June this year, China’s green credit balance has exceeded 11 trillion yuan, ranking the first in the world; the stock scale of green bonds is about 1.2 trillion yuan, ranking the second in the world.
Qian Lihua, chief green finance analyst of industrial research, said: “in 2020, the scale of green credit and green public funds in China will grow rapidly. Although affected by the epidemic and other factors, the issuance of green bonds has slowed down, it has recovered since the third quarter, and the proportion of green non-financial bonds issued by enterprises has increased significantly. ”
She pointed out that the issuance of “blue bonds” is another bright spot in the development of green finance in 2020. Chinese funded institutions, including Bank of China and Industrial Bank, began to issue “blue bonds” to support the sustainable utilization and protection of marine resources.
At present, green recovery has become an important direction to promote global economic transformation, and countries have launched supporting policies related to green transformation in energy, transportation and other fields. With the proposal of carbon neutral goal, China will continue to refine measures in accelerating green development, improving environmental quality, improving ecosystem quality and stability, and improving resource utilization efficiency, which will bring new opportunities for the development of green finance.
According to the global banking outlook report recently released by Bank of China, the scale of China’s green finance business is expected to reach about 16 trillion yuan in 2021.
In October, the Ministry of ecological environment and other departments issued the guiding opinions on promoting investment and financing in response to climate change, vigorously promoting the development of investment and financing in response to climate change, and clearly put forward the goal of “significantly increasing the scale of investment in response to climate change”.
Therefore, the development of carbon finance will step into the “fast lane”. Zhao Jianxun, deputy director of the comprehensive business department of Green Finance Department of Industrial Bank, said that during the “14th five year plan” period, the construction of China’s carbon emission trading market will be accelerated. With the continuous improvement of the market, financial institutions can provide carbon trading account opening, capital clearing and settlement, Carbon Asset pledge financing, value preservation and appreciation and other businesses involving carbon finance, and the development space of carbon finance will be gradually opened 。
In recent years, regulatory authorities continue to promote the implementation of green bonds, green credit and environmental information disclosure. The national green development fund with a total scale of 88.5 billion yuan was established in July this year. More and more insurance funds actively participate in green project investment.
It is understood that the central bank is revising the catalogue of green bond support projects to remove the production and consumption projects of traditional fossil energy from the scope of support and increase climate friendly projects. The next step is to establish a mandatory environmental information disclosure system for financial institutions.
Zhao Jianxun said that in recent years, China’s green finance standards, including green credit and green bonds, have been constantly improved, from qualitative to quantitative, which will help better play the guiding role of green finance.
Experts said that we should improve a series of policies and institutional arrangements for the green financial system, and guide more social funds into the development of green industry through financial services.
From the perspective of trend, the report of Bank of China believes that green finance will gradually become the mainstream business model of banking industry in 2021. More banks will draw on international experience to formulate the group’s unified green development strategy, including green finance, environmental and social risk management.
“It is expected that the financial industry will gradually reduce the allocation of high-carbon assets and increase the allocation of more green assets. At the same time, climate and environmental risk management should be integrated into the business strategy and business decision-making of the organization. ” Qian Lihua said that under the guidance of the policy, more financial institutions will put forward their own carbon neutral goals and establish the image of responsible financial institutions.