Hong Kong finance sector teams up with universities to plug green finance and ESG talent gap, tap China opportunities

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Uploaded: 2022-05-12T23:30:17.000Z
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Hong Kong needs more professionals who are well versed in the classification of projects that would qualify for environmentally-friendly funding, seminar hears

Some US$70 trillion of green financing will be needed to fund the transformation of China’s economy into one that is carbon neutral by 2060

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Around two thirds of the green bonds issued in Hong Kong are used to fund projects in the mainland. Photo: Shutterstock

Eric Ng

Published: 7:30am, 13 May 2022

Hong Kong’s financial sector and universities are working together to equip the city’s professionals with the knowledge and skills they need to tap the huge decarbonisation opportunities in China, an SCMP webinar on green finance and ESG (environmental, social and governance) talent development has heard.

In the next 30 years, some 480 trillion yuan (US$70.8 trillion) of green financing will be needed in China to fund the transformation of its economy into one that is carbon neutral by 2060, according to a report published last year by the green finance committee of the China Society for Finance and Banking.

“Even a small portion of that requires Hong Kong green finance services, and that will be enough to drive a huge increase in demand for talent,” Ma Jun, chairman of the committee as well as the Hong Kong Green Finance Association, told the Redefining Hong Kong series webinar on Thursday.

Around two thirds of the green bonds issued in Hong Kong are used to fund projects in the mainland, he noted.

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To meet demand, Hong Kong needs more green finance professionals who are well versed in the classification of projects that would qualify for environmentally friendly finance.

“There are more than 200 standards defining what is green,” Ma said. “You need to [know] what are the key ones, what are the ones that are going to be converging towards a set of forthcoming global standards.”