IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2202.07689.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Transparency principle for carbon emissions drives sustainable finance

Author

Listed:
  • Chris Kenyon
  • Mourad Berrahoui
  • Andrea Macrina

Abstract

Alignment of financial market incentives and carbon emissions disincentives is key to limiting global warming. Regulators and standards bodies have made a start by requiring some carbon-related disclosures and proposing others. Here we go further and propose a Carbon Equivalence Principle: all financial products shall contain a description of the equivalent carbon flows from greenhouse gases that the products enable, as well as their existing description in terms of cash flows. This description of the carbon flows enabled by the project shall be compatible with existing bank systems that track cashflows so that carbon flows have equal standing to cash flows. We demonstrate that this transparency alone can align incentives by applying it to project finance examples for power generation and by following through the financial analysis. The financial requirements to offset costs of carbon flows enabled in the future radically change project costs, and risk that assets become stranded, thus further increasing costs. This observation holds whichever partner in the project bears the enabled-carbon costs. Mitigating these risks requires project re-structuring to include negative emissions technologies. We also consider that sequestered carbon needs to remain sequestered permanently, e.g., for at least one hundred years. We introduce mixed financial-physical solutions to minimise this permanence cost, and price to them. This complements previous insurance-based proposals with lesser scope. For financial viability we introduce project designs that are financially net-zero, and as a consequence are carbon negative. Thus we see that adoption of the Carbon Equivalence Principle for financial products aligns incentives, requires product redesign, and is simply good financial management driving sustainability.

Suggested Citation

  • Chris Kenyon & Mourad Berrahoui & Andrea Macrina, 2022. "Transparency principle for carbon emissions drives sustainable finance," Papers 2202.07689, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2202.07689
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.07689
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tang, Dragon Yongjun & Zhang, Yupu, 2020. "Do shareholders benefit from green bonds?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    2. Flammer, Caroline, 2021. "Corporate green bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 499-516.
    3. Rene Carmona & Francois Delarue & Gilles-Edouard Espinosa & Nizar Touzi, 2012. "Singular Forward-Backward Stochastic Differential Equations and Emissions Derivatives," Papers 1210.5773, arXiv.org.
    4. K. Borovkov & G. Decrouez & J. Hinz, 2010. "Jump-diffusion modeling in emission markets," Papers 1001.3728, arXiv.org.
    5. Coleman, Andrew, 2018. "Forest-based carbon sequestration, and the role of forward, futures, and carbon-lending markets: A comparative institutions approach," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 95-104.
    6. Chang-Jing Ji & Yu-Jie Hu & Bao-Jun Tang, 2018. "Research on carbon market price mechanism and influencing factors: a literature review," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 92(2), pages 761-782, June.
    7. Torsten Ehlers & Diwen (Nicole) Gao & Frank Packer, 2021. "A taxonomy of sustainable finance taxonomies," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 118, July.
    8. Johannes Bednar & Michael Obersteiner & Artem Baklanov & Marcus Thomson & Fabian Wagner & Oliver Geden & Myles Allen & Jim W. Hall, 2021. "Operationalizing the net-negative carbon economy," Nature, Nature, vol. 596(7872), pages 377-383, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chris Kenyon & Mourad Berrahoui & Andrea Macrina, 2021. "Sustainability Manifesto for Financial Products: Carbon Equivalence Principle," Papers 2112.04181, arXiv.org.
    2. Lebelle, Martin & Lajili Jarjir, Souad & Sassi, Syrine, 2022. "The effect of issuance documentation disclosure and readability on liquidity: Evidence from green bonds," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    3. Yu, Qing & Hui, Eddie Chi-Man & Shen, Jianfu, 2024. "The real impacts of third-party certification on green bond issuances: Evidence from the Chinese green bond market," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    4. Wang, Chih-Wei & Wu, Yu-Ching & Hsieh, Hsin-Yi & Huang, Po-Hsiang & Lin, Meng-Chieh, 2022. "Does green bond issuance have an impact on climate risk concerns?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    5. Singh, Vikram & Jain, Sonali & Singh, Shveta, 2025. "Identification and pricing of labelled green bonds," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    6. Doğan, Buhari & Trabelsi, Nader & Tiwari, Aviral Kumar & Ghosh, Sudeshna, 2023. "Dynamic dependence and causality between crude oil, green bonds, commodities, geopolitical risks, and policy uncertainty," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 36-62.
    7. Huo, Xiaolin & Jiang, Dayan & Qiu, Zhigang & Yang, Sijie, 2022. "The impacts of dual carbon goals on asset prices in China," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    8. Mensi, Walid & Rehman, Mobeen Ur & Vo, Xuan Vinh, 2022. "Impacts of COVID-19 outbreak, macroeconomic and financial stress factors on price spillovers among green bond," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    9. Gillan, Stuart L. & Koch, Andrew & Starks, Laura T., 2021. "Firms and social responsibility: A review of ESG and CSR research in corporate finance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    10. Fiorillo, Paolo & Meles, Antonio & Ricciardi, Antonio & Verdoliva, Vincenzo, 2025. "ESG performance and the cost of debt. Evidence from the corporate bond market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    11. Joel, Tchuiendem Nelly & Zheng, Haitao & Liu, Bing-Yue, 2025. "Cross-region analysis of the environmental performance of green bond issuers," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    12. Muñiz, José Antonio & Larkin, Charles & Corbet, Shaen, 2025. "Understanding the use of unconventional monetary policy for portfolio decarbonisation in Europe," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    13. Thomas Flavin & Lisa Sheenan, 2025. "Can green bonds be a safe haven for equity investors?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 2270-2283, July.
    14. Huang, Chih-Yueh & Dekker, David & Christopoulos, Dimitrios, 2023. "Rethinking greenium: A quadratic function of yield spread," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    15. Patrick Velte, 2023. "Which institutional investors drive corporate sustainability? A systematic literature review," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 42-71, January.
    16. Deng, Yang & Zhang, Zhaoqin, 2025. "The spillover effects of green bond issuance in peer firms’ financial performance," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(PA).
    17. Karel Janda & Binyi Zhang, 2021. "Attractiveness of Chinese Bonds Financing Climate and Environmental Projects," FFA Working Papers 4.007, Prague University of Economics and Business, revised 26 Apr 2022.
    18. Arif, Muhammad & Hasan, Mudassar & Alawi, Suha M. & Naeem, Muhammad Abubakr, 2021. "COVID-19 and time-frequency connectedness between green and conventional financial markets," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    19. Pham, Linh & Cepni, Oguzhan, 2022. "Extreme directional spillovers between investor attention and green bond markets," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 186-210.
    20. Samuel Mutarindwa & Dorothea Schäfer & Andreas Stephan, 2024. "Certification against greenwashing in nascent bond markets: lessons from African ESG bonds," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 14(1), pages 149-173, March.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2202.07689. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.