Swedish Green Bonds on a sharp trajectory, boosted by Real Estate
Stockholm (NordSIP) – According to data provided by Nordea’s green bond team, the Swedish market experiencing a very sharp increase in the proportion of green bonds relative to the overall SEK-denominated bond market. This proportion is also much stronger in Sweden when looking at the Swedish Krona market relative to the Euro and US Dollar markets.
In both 2016 and 2017, the proportion of green bonds has stayed relatively homogeneous across currencies, at around 5%. In the first few months of this year, however, the SEK-denominated green bond market represents 14% of the entire SEK-denominated bond market. April saw also a number of good quality emissions with tight pricing, as we illustrated in the last week with Kommuninvest and its “greenium“.
When drilling down in the types of issuers that have contributed to this change, we observe that a considerable proportion belongs to the real estate sector. The traditional SSA and FIG sectors, which have been the most significant issuers of green bonds in previous years, only represent 6 out of the 23 green bonds issued in the Nordics this year, even if their proportion in value is more substantial, given the relatively larger size of these issues. All of the other 17 green bonds were issued by real estate companies, including Klövern and Jernhusen, which we commented a couple of weeks ago.
”The real estate sector is off to a rocket start this year, which is very exciting. The sector is particularly interesting from a Green bond perspective, and we hope to see other sectors follow suit,” says Anna Reuterskiöld, from Nordea.
This trend may reflect the fact that it is currently more natural, and therefore may be perceived as more attractive, for real estate companies to show and measure the impact of their projects on the environment. Typically, other corporate sectors usually associated with green bond issuers are utilities, such as waste management, recycling and renewable energy.
