Stockholm (NordSIP) – On December 12, 2019, the Green Assets Wallet, a new blockchain database for issuers and investors of green bonds and in green impact projects, was launched.
The platform is an initiative led by the Stockholm Green Digital Finance, leading capital market actors, green finance experts and technology innovators and was developed with funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
The Green Assets Wallet – which won the 2019 Nordic Ideas Award by Nordea – attempts to find a solution for overcoming inefficient impact reporting and the absence of reliable and trustworthy validation of the underlying projects. It offers a transparent platform for trusted green bond data and green impact disclosures.
“After two years of intensive development work, we and our partners are excited to see the Green Assets Wallet going into full service. Underwriters, stock exchanges, development banks, investors and issuers will benefit from the platform,” explains Cecilia Repinski, Executive Director of Stockholm Green Digital Finance, a Centre tasked to accelerate green finance and investment through fintech and co-owner of the platform.
The new platform equips the green debt market with the technology to increase the investments needed to deliver on the Paris Climate Agreement, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the recently unveiled European Green Deal.
According to Ashley Schulten, Head of Responsible Investing for Global Fixed Income at BlackRock, “compiling and comparing different impact reports can be complicated and time-consuming. We see this platform as a way to simplify this process for investors. As the green bond market has led the way for other types of environmental, financial products, we hope that this foray into using blockchain for impact metrics can be the start of mainstreaming work around digital tokens for environmental impact and natural capital.”
“There is an untapped potential of investable green projects in Africa, said Númi Östlund,” said Director at AidHedge. “The Green Assets Wallet could help reveal these to global investors.” This sentiment was echoed by Oscar Njuguna, Senior Business Development Manager, Nairobi International Financial Centre Authority, who commented that “the Green Assets Wallet has the potential to help scale up the green bond market, especially in emerging markets.
“The Green Assets Wallet is an attractive and user-friendly platform to facilitate green bond impact communication between issuers and investors. The underlying blockchain injects trust into the system, which is useful for new market actors in particular,” Björn Bergstrand, Head of Sustainability at Kommuninvest added.
Image by Jonathan Reichel from Pixabay
