Green Bonds and the Νeed for Greater Transparency Was High Lighted in a Letter by IENE' Chairman Published in the Financial Times

Under the title "Green finance needs to be more open", a letter which was send to the Financial Times by IENE's chairman Costis Stambolis was published on August 9.

Stambolis was responding to an article on Green Bonds by Joshua Kendall which was published in the FT on July 31. In hisarticle entitled " Clearer metrics are needed to assess green bond authenticity", Kendall was calling for the urgent need to introduce some kind of standard so that financial institutions and issuers could avoid pitfalls when making decisions to invest in green financial instruments. As renewable energy and related projects are taking off with billions of dollars invested every year at a growing rate the role of genuine Green Bonds is becoming crucial. Green Bonds have an important role to play in raising much needed finance for sustainable energy projects in SE and Central Europe over the coming years.

The following is the letter by Costis Stambolis as published in the Financial Times:

"Dear Sir,

Joshua Kendall’s article on Green Bonds ( Funds must red-flag the green bonds that are as black as coal- FTfm, August,5) raises a very salient point regarding the need to authenticate Green Bonds. As the Green Bond market is developing at a fast rate some issuers are clearly taking advantage to raise debt and label it irrespectively as ‘green’. Such attitudes are of course detrimental to the further development of the Green Bond market and their use as genuine and effective tools in supporting much needed investment in clean energy.

Mr.Kendall alludes to the need of a gold standard for green issuance and indicates that European Commission’s green bond standard could offer a solution. But the EC has a misplaced tendency to want to standardize everything that moves and therefore should abstain from efforts to regulate the market. Green Bonds have a great future as sustainable energy fund raising instruments and global financial markets are mature enough to be able to discern between a fake and a real Green Bond. What is needed is a lot more transparency which in the day and age of digitalization is not difficult to achieve.

Costis Stambolis 

Chairman and Executive Director,

Institute of Energy for South East Europe (IENE)

Athens, Greece"