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Overview: about the EBRDWho we are
Overview: about the EBRD
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Explore the EBRD’s journey over the decades, investing in businesses, supporting economies and driving lasting change across its regions.
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Overview: how the EBRD operatesWhat we do
Overview: how the EBRD operates
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Light
Eng
Eng
Green Bonds: Pioneering Inception and Navigating Maturity
June 2024
Evaluation of EBRD’s Green Bond Investments (2017-2022)
Background
EBRD, like handful of other MDBs, has been issuing green bonds since over a decade by now. Yet, since 2017 it also started investing in green bonds with an intention to promote the instrument and to develop green bond markets in its countries of operations (CoOs). By the end-2022, its portfolio of investments in green bonds reached €1.25 billion. This Evaluation of EBRD’s Green Bond Investments 2017–22 was completed in June 2024, and it hinged on ‘cluster approach’ with findings flowing primarily (albeit not exclusively) from the in-depth evaluation of 10 individual Bank’s investments in 10 issuances by corporates and financial institutions across seven countries.
The objective of the evaluation was to provide evaluative evidence on EBRD’s relevance as a green bond investor, as well as on the effectiveness and efficiency of its investments, related activities and overall approach to green bond markets. This was the first ever evaluation of a green bond investment programme among MDBs, and it therefore represented a novel and important contribution in the field of climate finance evaluation.
Main findings
The evaluation revealed Bank’s commendable contribution to the development of nascent green bond markets in its CoOs, for instance by instrumental investments in considerable number of ‘first-time’ issuers of green bonds, especially in the early years of its program. Often, the EBRD acted as trusted anchor investor that came early in the process of building the order book and made sizable and firm commitments. However, the evaluation also pointed out to a limited role of green bond investments in direct mobilisation effort, albeit contrasted with reasonable evidence of an indirect mobilisation. It found material shortcomings in the impact reporting of green bond issuers – nowadays one of the most pressing issues for many ESG sensitive investors. In some cases, EBRD’s own ex-ante impact estimates and reporting could not be relied upon with confidence neither.