Shipping investment has completed a shift towards environmental efforts being at the forefront of investor retention, Nor-Shipping has heard.
Stephane Boujnah, chief executive of stock exchange group Euronext, told the Norwegian event’s Ocean Leadership Conference: “Really what is changing is that investors have now chosen their camps, and they are totally changing their prioritisation of objectives.
“There was a time, five years ago, where getting ESG [environmental, social and governance] investors was a good way to diversify your investor base. Today, it is the condition to keep your investors.”
He argues that this has been “an accelerator” of decarbonisation development.
Euronext is developing ESG indices to help investors find relevant projects, Boujnah said.
One factor making shipping’s green finance picture more transparent has been the wide take-up of the Poseidon Principles, which provide a global framework for assessing and disclosing the climate alignment of lenders’ shipping books.
Banks must disclose whether their loan portfolios are meeting climate goals.
Norwegian shipping lender DNB’s chief executive, Kjerstin Braathen, said the measures have made for greater transparency around the indirect emissions in its maritime portfolio.
The bank has a clear target of a 25% reduction towards 2030, she added.
A start, but not enough
“It is enough? No,” she admitted, but “The principles are not static. This will be a dynamic process. This is about having a map. If you don’t have a map, you don’t know where you are going.”
Gyrid Skalleberg Ingero, chief financial officer of Norwegian maritime technology group Kongsberg, said shipping is not doing enough, but sustainable finance is increasing. One-fifth of the bond market is now green in Nordic countries, she added.
Skalleberg Ingero also expressed her frustration that regulations on emissions taxation are changing all the time.
She called for a global standardisation of regimes and said it is a weakness of the industry that this has not been “landed” yet.
Braathen said it is going to take time. Meanwhile, DNB is helping small and medium-sized companies understand that decarbonisation will take a lot of work and “there’s no way around it”.
Boujnah said it is investors who are now driving the spread of green bonds in shipping.
“Norway leads the way. The first green bond was created here in 2015 and the market has not stopped developing. We are in a Norway moment,” he added.
