A Green Hand's Notes of Green Finance

Green Finance, which may sound new and strange to outsiders, was also completely out of my knowledge scope, especially for someone like me with little know-how about finance itself. Yeah, this field always seem abstract to me, though in everyday life my behaviours may link to it unconsciously. But if someone asks me to explain all that I learn about finance activities, it’s very likely that he won’t get any clear answers.

So, the reason why I decide to spend some time in writing this is that green finance has now become one part in my current job that should be known. Certainly I don’t need to be an expert in it, yet the more the better. After taking part in a workshop last week, I consider it a good way to compile notes and comments with a bit of understanding in order to strengthen memory and impression.

What’s Green Finance?
Generally speaking, it is about finance activities that refer to green development, especially in supporting environmental improvement, responding to climate change and utilizing resources effectively. It refers to environment protection, energy-saving, clean energy, green transportation, and green architecture.

How it comes up?
In summary, to develop green finance is not only because of environment and resource demands, cheap oakley sunglasses, but also in conformity with domestic and global policy requirements. As is known to all, centuries ago people focused on economic growth extensively. The environment around the globe was then affected and damaged to different extents. In recent decades, climate change has become an issue frequently spoken off and discussed about in various international conferences. Needless to say, if people in our era do not pay attention and take action to fight climate change, the consequence can be destructive beyond imagination.
As one of the effective methods to tackle climate change, green finance has emerged as the times require. In Paris Agreement, many nations set goals for reducing carbon emission in the years to come. In G20 Summit Hangzhou, it caused a hot discussion, which was like a fresh green stream. In terms of China, it was included in the top design in the General Scheme of Ecological Civilization System Reform at the first time. Then it appeared in the government work reports in 2016 and 2017. Last year, seven departments and committees in China issued Guidelines for Establishing Green Financial System. And some cities have been striving for constructing green finance demonstration area. Over the past years, China has witnessed great progress in the development of green finance.

What are the main products of green finance?
Green credit and loan, green bonds, and green stock index. There are some measures to promote green finance, like green fund and green insurance.


Ah, have to stop here, though what’s taken down seems insufficient. When I look back, such notes even haven’t reached the point of green finance as expected. Although it’s not long, it’s taken much time. It’s not only because of thinking about how to express while writing, but also of lack in English practice.

Apart from the one-day workshop, I also went over the first four chapters of a book about green economy. Published in 2010, this book was not hard to read. From it, I got some background information about green finance as well, talking about how emission reduction and carbon trade took place after the Tokyo Protocol and how our lifestyle can be changed in the future. Some ways mentioned are becoming more popular today, such as sharing bicycles –yes, this should belong to green transportation.

Recently, I have my green energy counted in the "Ant Forestry" in the Alipay App. Through daily low carbon actions like walking, electronic payment, etc., the carbon emission that’s saved can be collected by grams on the second day. Green energy can also be obtained from the friends’ trees or given out 10g per time via watering their trees. But the energy will disappear if not received within three days. So the user has to be a hard-working ant, haha. A green tree is seen in the mobile phone screen, and it grows and changes with the energy grams that are absorbed. It’s said that if the collected energy reaches 17900g, cheap nfl jerseys, I can contribute to planting a genuine tree in the desert. That may take a long time, but why not have a try? Even if I fail to achieve the target within one year, I still participate in others’ tree planting by sharing the green energy to friends. Haha… I guess this also relates to green finance, or how can the company exchange a real tree?

Green finance is a huge topic actually, covering lots of things in a number of aspects. Maybe later I'll have other chances to learn more in this field.