APEC businesses propose new climate bonds, carbon credit network
The group of business executives comprising ABAC, which is APEC's Business Advisory Council, also proposed on Sunday launching a pilot program to develop a voluntary carbon market (VCM) for the Asia-Pacific region.
"What we're trying to establish is an interoperable, or mutually tradeable, voluntary carbon credit network within the Asia-Pacific region that can accelerate the region's transition to a low-carbon society," Hiroshi Nakaso, head of ABAC's finance and investment task force, told a news conference on Sunday.
Under the program, like-minded countries will conduct cross-border carbon credit transactions on a trial basis to identify problems and possible solutions, Nakaso said.
The Asia-Pacific region lacks cross-border standards or regulatory infrastructure for a voluntary carbon market, a mechanism that channels private financing into climate projects.
The proposals, compiled at a meeting in Tokyo on Aug. 1-4, underscore a growing awareness in Asia about the need for private and public sectors to cooperate in financing the huge cost of energy transition.
ABAC, an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) advisory council, will present its recommendations at the APEC leaders' summit to be held in Lima in November. Peru is this year's chair of APEC, a bloc that accounts for almost half of world trade.
In the list of proposals, ABAC called on governments in the region to issue 10-year bonds with interest and principal payments indexed to a basket of currencies.
Such bonds would give developing nations access to hard currency to buy solar farms and storage facilities, and mitigate risk from exchange-rate fluctuation for lenders, said Tom Harley, one of the task force's project leaders from Australia.
Asia is among the world's most vulnerable regions to climate-related natural disasters. It also consists of many economies reliant on fossil fuel or vulnerable to currency market swings, heightening challenges for energy transition.