My name is Bond, Green Bond
Monday, October 6th, 2008My Clean Break column today talks about the idea of creating a green bond as a safe investment vehicle for Canadians that at the same time could raise money for large-scale renewable energy projects, enabling infrastructure and building-efficiency projects. The money would be distributed in the form of low-interest debt financing. Given the current credit crunch, now is perhaps the best time to launch a green bond as renewable energy developers face higher financing hurdles for their capital-intensive projects. At the same time, Canadians whose stock portfolios have been ravaged by the collapse of Wall Street — and the precipitous decline of the commodity-heavy Toronto Stock Exchange — could take advantage of green bonds as a safe haven with modest turns, at the same time knowing that their money is going toward building “green” infrastructure that both tackles climate change and creates jobs in a struggling economy. (more…)
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
