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I’m sure you’re all wondering why today’s Sustainable Switch wasn’t in your inbox earlier… but it was all part of the plan, I assure you. You will now be receiving your newsletter two hours later than before in order to better serve readers across time zones.
Now that the housekeeping is out of the way, let’s dive into some tasty greens as countries around the world get an appetite for green bonds which are used to fund ecological projects. Austria launched its first ever green bond on Tuesday, while the UK aims to sell more of its 30-year green gilt and Japan plans to issue an estimated 20 trillion yen ($157 billion) worth of "green transition" bonds.
Austria hired Barclays, BofA, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and UniCredit to manage the sale of its 4 billion-euro ($4.3 billion) 27-year bond. A memo from the lead manager seen by Reuters showed final investor demand of 25 billion euros. Austria would retain 250 million euros of the issuance.
Britain aims to hold a syndication to sell more of its 1.5% July 2053 green gilt in either July or September, the United Kingdom Debt Management Office said on Tuesday. It drew more than $100 billion of demand for the bond when it sold 6 billion pounds ($7.50 billion) of the bond at its launch in October. Germany, Italy, Spain and the European Union issued their debut green bonds over the last two years.
Sales of Green, Social and Sustainability (GSS) bonds in Europe could total 1.6 trillion euros ($1.72 trillion) by 2026, making up almost half of all new bond issuance in the region, according to a new report by PwC Luxembourg. The study draws on the accounting firm's forecasts and survey of investors and bond issuers in 2021 and comes as investors are increasingly concerned about climate change and Europe's efforts to shift towards a more sustainable economy.
Elsewhere, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida laid out a plan to issue an estimated 20 trillion yen ($157 billion) worth of "green transition" bonds to help finance investment to achieve a carbon-neutral society. Kishida said Japan would need at least 150 trillion yen in combined private- and public-investment in the next decade to achieve a carbon-neutral society.
Egypt is also planning on issuing $500 million in green and development bonds, deputy finance minister Ahmed Kouchouk told CNBC Arabia on Monday. | | | | | |  | | | | A climate activist wearing a face mask depicting Shell's CEO Ben van Beurden attends a protest outside Shell headquarters during the company's first investor meeting since moving to the UK, in London, Britain, May 24, 2022. REUTERS/Hannah McKay | | | | • | A group of climate protesters disrupted Shell's annual general meeting (AGM) on Tuesday, chanting slogans and holding banners as Shell Chair Andrew Mckenzie tried to start the meeting. | | | | | | | | | • | To control climate change, the world must go beyond cutting carbon dioxide emissions and curb lesser-known pollutants such as nitrous oxide playing a key role in warming the planet, new research suggests. | | | | | • | Tesla CEO Elon Musk may have denounced business use of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors as a "scam" last week but one sustainable investing pioneer thinks the electric carmaker still believes in the cause. | | | | | • | Breakingviews: Ukraine generates more electricity than it needs, and from carbon-neutral nuclear plants, too. But its links to the EU power grid are sketchy. Helping the war-torn nation bolster exports to the EU would support Kyiv’s economy while easing the bloc’s energy headache. | | | | | | | | James Katz, CEO & founder of Humankind Investments, a U.S.-based fund focusing on socially responsible investments, shares his thoughts on Elon Musk’s comments about ESG factors as a “scam” last week after Tesla’s removal from the S&P 500 ESG Index. | | | | “ESG terminology could use some standardization. Today, some people think of ESG investing as a way to invest in morally good companies while some ESG ratings firms would say that their ESG metrics are not a measure of the company's goodness.
“That mismatch is extremely problematic. If ESG means so many different things to so many different people, it's not useful to label something as "ESG". It may be that the only way to get clarity here is to abandon the term ESG, which is too general and tries to encompass too much. At a minimum, investment managers need to define what they mean when they say "ESG".
“In the U.S., the most likely candidate that could have the power to try and standardize terminology and definitions on ESG-related advertising is the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). Government regulation can be a double-edged sword – there is a chance that they may miss the mark on the definition of ESG, making it too narrow or broad, or may simply get it wrong.
“But I think the SEC has had a lot of success in the past by promoting transparency. The SEC may want to come up with a series of ESG-related labels and definitions that managers can use to describe their investment products if they meet certain standards. That could be a way to make space for the different flavors of ESG investing out there and then allow investors to make educated decisions as to which one they want to invest in.
“In particular, I think a distinction between strategies that only care about how ESG risks may impact a company's profits (and are therefore much more similar to traditional alpha-seeking strategies than anything else) as opposed to strategies that care about how the company's pursuit of profits can impact various ESG issues (and are therefore more morally oriented) would be helpful.” | | | | | | | | | | Sponsored by |  |  | | | |  | | | | Moody's ESG 360™ platform for a 360° view of decision relevant ESG issues. | | | | Learn More | | | | | | | | | |  | | | Indonesia, the world's biggest palm oil exporter, will next month remove a subsidy on bulk cooking oil and replace it with a price cap on the raw materials sold to local refiners, a senior official said Tuesday.
Last week, a palm oil farmer in West Sulawesi told Reuters that trucks in his area had been stuck for days as farmers desperate to try to limit losses bypassed agents and offloaded their crop. Repeated changes in its export policies this year have shaken global markets at a time of uncertain edible oil supplies caused by the war in Ukraine. | | | | | | | Global asset management Aviva Investors has appointed Sam Tripuraneni as head of sustainable outcomes. He will oversee the firm’s stewardship and sustainable outcomes franchises, encompassing the climate transition, social transition and natural capital transition suite of products.
He joins Aviva Investors after seven years at BlackRock, most recently as a director in its sustainable investing team, where he worked closely with investment and client business teams to develop investment solutions to meet environmental, social and financial objectives. Before joining the financial services industry, he served as a captain in the British Army. | | | | Just Climate, an investment business dedicated to climate-led investing to address the net zero challenge at scale, has appointed Souleymane Ba as a partner on the investment team.
Ba has nearly 20 years of principal investing and corporate finance experience across a range of investment stages and industries, including industrials, infrastructure and financial services in the U.S. and Africa. He will also join Just Climate’s executive committee and its investment committee. | | | | | | | | “The true definition of an impact investor and impact strategy is when you're accepting lower returns in order to have an impact on the world that you're investing in.” | | | | Lucas White, portfolio manager at international investment firm GMO | | | | | | | • | Find out how South Korea's three major battery makers are rapidly expanding their U.S. manufacturing footprint in a Reuters report coming out tomorrow. | | | | | • | TotalEnergies, Amazon and Facebook’s Meta hold their annual shareholders meetings tomorrow as each face ESG queries from activist investors. | | | | | • | Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck and Environment Minister Steffi Lemke to host their G7 colleagues in Berlin on May 26. | | | | | • | Read our report coming out on May 26 on why Bosnia and Herzegovina citizens are criticizing Croatia’s potential storage facility for radioactive waste near their border. | | | | | | | | | | The Great Reboot | | |  | | | With COVID-19 lockdowns normalizing home delivery of everything from fast food to aspirin, brewers are tapping into a lucrative new sales format - delivering cold beer on demand to consumers still gathering at home with friends even as bars reopen.
For Brazilian Rafael Mazaia, it is cheaper to order beers for delivery to his home than to drive to the supermarket to pick up a pack and risk them being tepid when he returns. | | | | | | | | We think you may like these: | | |
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