The numbers are simply astounding. Governments, corporations and other groups raised a record $490 billion last year selling green, social and sustainability bonds. A further $347 billion poured into ESG-focused investment funds—an all-time high—and more than 700 new funds were launched globally to capture the deluge of inflows.
And 2021 is shaping up to be just as frothy. Moody’s Investors Service expects sustainable-debt issuance to reach $650 billion while money flows to ESG funds show no signs of slowing. This will be the year of “green stimulus as major economies attempt to integrate their economic recovery and job creation initiatives with their longer-term efforts to reduce carbon emissions,” Moody’s wrote in a recent report.
Sustainable funds in the U.S. attracted $51.2 billion in 2020, more than double the previous calendar-year record of $21.4 billion set in 2019, according to researchers at Morningstar Inc. Still, the American market remains a fraction of the size of Europe’s, which accounts for about 81% of the $1.65 trillion of global assets in sustainable funds, Morningstar reported.
Source: BNN Bloomberg
By Tim Quinson
