Progress Report on Mobilising Institutional Investment for Green Infrastructure

This Progress Report updates analysis in the OECD’s 2015 Report for G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors “Mapping Channels to Mobilise Institutional Investment in Sustainable Energy” (OECD, 2015a). It is also provided as a contribution to the “Greening Institutional Investors” sub-group of the G20 Green Finance Study Group, co-chaired by the People’s Bank of China and the Bank of England.

The introduction provides the necessary context for the report and is followed by a review of institutional investment in green infrastructure (focused on renewable energy) that is occurring “organically”, where government sets an “investment-grade” enabling environment but does not deploy any further intervention to mobilise institutional investors. A “stock-taking” section follows, focused on institutional investment in green infrastructure where the public or official sector has deployed a “risk mitigant” or “transaction enabler” to open up the supply of investment. This section is accompanied by a research database to be made available on the OECD website. A summary section with implications for further research concludes the main body of the report. Finally, a fifth, self-contained section of the report, prepared by the World Bank Group as an input to the report, is provided in Annex A. This section provides a preliminary description of the role of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) and strategic investment funds (SIFs) in green finance.

A range of public or official sector actors were involved across the case studies of institutional investments, including government ministries, green investment banks, export credit agencies and multilateral development banks… Given the relatively recent establishment of public green investment banks, it is notable that five such institutions, located in three countries, were involved in one quarter of the deals (UK GIB, Australia CEFC, NY Green Bank, Connecticut Green Bank, Hawaii GEMS).