Climate sustainability, energy security, urban resilience, water security

Facing the environmental and climate challenges that threaten humanity, the world economy is making a grand transition marked by green and sustainable development. The financial sector is needed to provide the enormous capital for, and benefits from, the transition. Green finance, as “financing of investments that provide environmental benefits in the broader context of environmentally sustainable development”, represents a new trend of global finance.

The Green Finance (GF) cluster of Institute of Public Policy (IPP) will seek to design, analyze and examine effective green finance policies, engage in problem-oriented policy research, mobilize community-based efforts and encourage the design of practical green financial solutions.

Relevant Projects

Developing a Green Finance Centre in Hong Kong in the Context of Green Development of the Guangdong – Hong Kong – Macao Greater Bay Area: Institutional Analysis and Policy Design

Green finance is a worldwide phenomenon and an emerging intellectual discipline. However, intellectual progress has lagged behind the development of green finance and its global impacts. The challenge lies in the intrinsically interdisciplinary nature of green finance, which requires synergistic collaboration between scholars from different disciplines.

The goal of this research project is to advance the intellectual frontier of green finance by conducting a series of cohesive studies that address fundamental research questions, including:

1. the impacts of environmental risks on financial markets and financial decisions;
2. climate risk modeling and derivative products;
3. the financing of green infrastructure projects;
4. enabling technologies of green finance;
5. talent capacity building and talent development;
6. the effectiveness of policy and regulatory instruments in developing green finance in Hong Kong 

This research project is supplemented by a “Think-and-Do” approach to develop technology prototypes and proof-of-concept financial products in collaboration with industry partners and government units. This is the first-of-its-kind study in nature and scale that addresses important issues pertaining to green finance. Its deliverables will advance the intellectual frontier of the discipline as well as benefiting government and industry stakeholders.