A forum gathering global banking leaders, eminent scholars and government officials was held in Beijing on Monday in a bid to explore the interaction between energy security and green development, and discuss measures for mobilizing financing to enable the clean energy transition. 

The event, focusing on "the real economy and financial services," was a parallel forum under the Annual Conference of Financial Street Forum 2022 running from Nov. 21-23, which is widely regarded as the bellwether for China's financial industry reform and development.

"Geopolitical conflicts globally and the continuing impacts of COVID-19 have devastating effects on livelihoods and social economic stability, which will further strain, among other things, energy systems across the globe," said James George, deputy resident representative for United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) China.

"The energy sector, which we are discussing today, is the biggest contributor to climate change," he said. "We must ensure that the transformation of the global energies is fast enough."

The UNDP official stressed that "a financial system that can support a low carbon transition" is needed, and noted that barriers to energy security are not entirely technological, and instead mostly come from "the lack of a supporting financial mechanism and insufficient funding."

"Just around 1% of global financial assets would be enough to finance the global energy transition. Regulators have a key role in promoting a fair and credible carbon price that fully reflects the climate and environmental damages of certain economic activities. Accounting for environment of externality should be a powerful incentive with low carbon investment opportunity," he said. 

George also lauded China's commitments to the renewable energy sector as "positive steps," which need to be followed up by accelerated action and which can provide lessons for the rest of the world.

China attaches great importance to the green transition, said Liu Jin, executive vice president of China Development Bank (CDB). 

As an essential tool for resource allocation, finance can guide the flow of resources to low-energy and environmentally friendly sectors and promote the coordinated development of energy and ecological environment, Liu said, adding that the financial industry can help support the steady implementation of the country's carbon peaking and neutralization strategy by actively underpinning the development of new energy technologies and infrastructure construction.

He also spoke about the measures taken by the CDB to promote the transformation of the energy structure, including implementing the green and low-carbon finance strategy, providing financial support to serve the construction of energy infrastructure, and issuing green finance bonds.

In 2021, the CDB issued 20 billion yuan ($3 billion) of carbon-neutrality green bonds, China's first carbon neutrality bond acknowledged by the Climate Bonds Initiative, an international organization that promotes investment in low-carbon and climate-resilient projects and assets.

By the end of the third quarter of this year, the policy bank had floated 144 billion yuan of green bonds, Liu said, adding that it also had issued 406.9 billion yuan of loans in the energy sector between this January and September.

The CDB will continue to provide higher quality and more efficient financial services, contributing to the green transformation, he said. 

Marcos Prado Troyjo, president of the New Development Bank (NDB) established by the BRICS group of emerging nations, also shared its practices in boosting green development.

"We're helping our member countries to achieve their green agenda. Seven years into operations, the NDB has approved a total of over $32 million for 91 infrastructure and sustainable development projects across its member countries.

"Policies and reforms aimed at shifting away from hydrocarbons and increasing energy efficiency in the distribution of consumption levels are key to redevelopment," Troyjo concluded. 

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