Business leaders gather in São Paulo to set green finance agenda
What’s it all about?
Executive level members of the Brazil Green Finance Initiative (BGFI) gathered yesterday at BNDES headquarters in São Paulo to set the 2018 agenda for the group, with a focus on development of Brazil’s green investment pipeline, mobilizing the investor community and building strategic international partnerships on green finance.
Also present at the meeting was the Lord Mayor of London, Charles Bowman, who’s been visiting Latin American countries accompanied by a business delegation with the aim of strengthening investment links with the City of London.
During the meeting, members of the Initiative highlighted the enormous potential of the Brazilian market for the development of green finance (that has already exceeded the mark of 11 billion reais since June 2015). However, it’s been stressed the need of capacity building when talking about investors, who should be armed with more instruments in order to attract a larger number of green projects.
Originally launched by the secretariats of CEBDS and the Climate Bonds Initiative in 2016 as a market development group, the BGFI is comprised of 27 representatives from domestic pension funds, insurance companies, banks, major industry sectors and investors, working cooperatively to strengthen the development of a local green finance market and attract international capital flows to fund the development of Brazil’s future economy.
Who’s saying what?
Justine Leigh-Bell, Director Climate Bonds Initiative
“Brazil has an extraordinary opportunity to be a champion of low carbon economic development and a global exporter of sustainable agriculture and forestry products at scale. We need to build engagement with local and international investors, while working with with domestic stakeholders to develop long term infrastructure and sector investment pipelines that contribute to these twin goals.”
“International partnerships will be vital to Brazil achieving its climate and development objectives. The UK has shown a continuing commitment to supporting the Brazilian green finance market and increasing investment opportunities. The BGFI will be looking to build on this support during 2018.”
Charles Bowman, the Lord Mayor of the City of London
“I’ve just landed in São Paulo and I’m so excited to be here. One of my primary objectives here is to promote London’s leadership in green finance and make the partnership that already exists between the UK and Brazil taking one step further.”
“We’ve had a phenomenal dialogue in relation to this agenda today and its clear there is appetite for it, desire for it. Lots of low hanging fruit, lots of ideas. The trick is now stitching them all together with this complex agenda that we have. Very exciting.”
Marina Grossi, CEBDS President
“It’s exciting to see so many ideas in order to develop the green finance market in Brazil. What we should do now, and this is a challenge, is to accelerate these sophisticated initiatives, bringing together investors and companies and stimulate their conversation on the benefits of the low carbon market.”
“There’s no doubt we need a much bigger investment volume in order to achieve the 1 trillion market goal. We’ve heard a lot about green bonds and international partnerships and initiatives today and this is only the beginning.”
André Salcedo, Head of Capital Markets Division, BNDES
“Today we’ve heard about the potential of the Brazilian market and how much the national green finance sector can grow with greater engagement with international partners. The Brazilian potential is enormous indeed, but still little explored.”
“Promoting the green finance agenda is one of the BGFI’s priorities for 2018 and I’m sure we’ll be soon celebrating the good results of it.”
Marcus Peixoto Botafogo, Investor Relations, Vinci Partners
“There is a very significant potential for green financing in Brazil in the coming years, something around 11bi reais just for solar, wind and transmission lines. In order to achieve that we need to improve the approach with institutional investors by showing them that the green bonds have lower risk (so, may offer a bit lower yields than similar issues and still be more compelling) and also improving the regulatory design for green emissions to make them even more attractive (that is, allowing pension funds to buy issues from SPEs – project level issues).”
The Last Word
Our main focus in Brazil at the moment is developing green investment pipelines and mobilising investor engagement. We’ll identify the best opportunities in key sectors and work together to unlock the potential of these portfolios.
We’ll mobilize pension funds and institutional investors whilst attracting, supporting and re-engaging investors in Brazil. International partnerships are also a priority for us this year.
We believe Brazil will thrive in 2018.
‘Till next time,
Climate Bonds
