Climate change: Asian governments must push policies to stimulate green financing for clean energy, conference hears

The region’s governments need to ‘incentivise both supply and demand for green financing,’ says a climate researcher at MSCI

Green financing typically funds renewable energy projects that will help decarbonise the region’s fossil-fuel reliant economies

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Asia needs a stronger policy push to incentivise green financing to reach its climate goals. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 7:30am, 18 Aug 2022Updated: 8:03am, 18 Aug 2022

Asia needs a stronger policy push to incentivise green financing to reach climate goals even as a surge in fossil fuel prices boosts the appeal of clean energy, a sustainability conference has heard.

“There is a huge amount of work to be done from a regulatory perspective, to try to incentivise both supply and demand of green financing,” said Miranda Carr, the Singapore-based global head of applied ESG and climate research at indices compiler MSCI.

“Without a systematic and wider regulatory push to do it, what we are seeing in quite a few markets [in the region] is very little issuance compared to the European market where there are much more incentives in place.”

She was speaking at the SCMP Asia Sustainability conference on Tuesday.

Green financing in Asia typically funds renewable energy projects that will help decarbonise the region’s fossil-fuel reliant economies.

The sharp rise in natural gas prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has seen Asian and European nations increase their use of more carbon-intensive coal that will work against their climate goals in the short term. However, the price surge could have a different impact in the long term, Carr said.