Green financing: Global understandings and Russian practices review

• Main Authors: E. A. Tarkhanova, A. V. Fricler
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Ural State University of Economics 2021-01-01
• Series: Journal of New Economy
• Online Access: http://jne.usue.ru/ru/2020/939

The success of the green economy crucially depends on whether there is a strong financial system, which allows attracting and distributing financial resources to implement environmental projects. Challenging tasks in the sphere of ecology require stimulating the attraction of funds from extra-budgetary sources, creating and designing tools for these activities. The state’s focus on the development and application of green financing tools in Russia is likely to increase the inflow of Russian and foreign investments, and thus reduce the cost of funds borrowed to carry out environmental projects. The study explores the problematic aspects related to the development of green financing as a basis for sustainable development. The research methodology relies on the concept of sustainable development and a problem-oriented approach. The study uses synthesis, analysis and statistical methods. The authors draw on the definitions of green financing provided by various international organizations, for instance, Bloomberg, UNEP, Green Finance Study Group (GFSG) and others. The researchers systemitise the understandings of the green financing, its areas, and based on this, investigate the development of green finance in Russia. The paper examines Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service data that describes the dynamics and structure of green investment in Russia during 2008–2019. To evaluate the results of green investments the authors compare the green growth indicators taken from the Global Green Economy Index and the Global Innovation Index. An overview of the development of the green financing in Russia demonstrates that the characteristic features of the country’s green investment system relate to the structure of sources of green financing. In particular, Russian green investments significantly consist of the companies’ own funds. This fact totally contradicts other counties’ practice, where the main part of financing is provided by the public sector and specialized manufacturers.