June, 2024
Green bonds have seen a buoyant growth in recent years, already accounting for approximately 4% of the global bond market and they are vital to channelling capital towards green projects. EBRD has been issuing green bonds since 2010. In 2017, it also started investing in the asset class issued by corporates and financial institutions (FIs) in the Bank’s Countries of Operations (CoOs), with the portfolio size reaching €1.25 billion by the end of 2022. By doing so, the Bank sought to play a meaningful role in developing the nascent green bond markets in its CoOs.
The objective of this report is to provide evaluative evidence on the Bank’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. Findings flow primarily (although not exclusively) from the evaluation of the sample of 10 EBRD investments in 10 green bonds issued by a mix of corporates and FIs from seven countries in 2017-2022. EBRD’s own green bond issuances and the Bank’s policy dialogue activities are out of the scope of this evaluation.
This is the first evaluation of multilateral development banks’ (MDBs) investments in green bonds. To that end, it represents a novel and important contribution in the field of climate finance evaluation.