Can finance reduce pollution during the Covid-19 crisis?

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With the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 26) scheduled for  November, governments are under growing pressure to meet their national commitments to decarbonise.

Green transition at scale will require a lot of collaboration and, in a global economy still in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic, finance will have a key role to play in ‘building back better’ and ‘building back greener’.

For instance, one proposal as to how to fund a green recovery from Covid-19 is through carbon taxation. It can change the status quo by encouraging investments in innovation and climate friendly technologies. But without inclusive policies addressing existing inequalities it risks making the poor poorer.

The Governor of the Banque de France, François Villeroy de Galhau, recently called for a decarbonisation of trillions of euros worth of corporate bonds.

But how realistic it is for already struggling firms and industries to survive new heftier taxes?

This and many other questions are discussed in our latest episode of Pocket Dilemmas podcast, where Kerrie Law and Jonathan Charles are joined by:

* EBRD’s Director of Research Ralph de Haas

* Associate Professor of Economics at Imperial College London, Ralf Martin

Can finance reduce pollution during the Covid-19 crisis? Listen to our latest episode.

Read research papers related to the subject:

Managerial and financial barriers to net-zero transition

Financial development and industrial pollution

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