During Hong Kong Climate Week 2026, Sean Kidney, Co-founder and CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI), spoke with Dr. Ma Jun, President of the Institute of Finance and Sustainability (IFS), about how RMB financing can support global climate investment. The discussion followed CBI's H1 2026 report, which showed that GSS+ debt had reached USD 7.3 trillion, with a record quarterly green bond issuance of USD 210.8 billion.

The dialogue focused on green panda bonds and green dim sum bonds. Although these markets remain relatively small, they are growing fast. Dr. Ma identified four key bottlenecks: limited awareness among potential issuers, insufficient credit enhancement, unfamiliarity with cross-border procedures, and weak links between financing supply and project demand.

Proposed solutions included more demonstration issuances, market education through platforms such as the Capacity-building Alliance of Sustainable Investment (CASI), joint guarantees from multilateral development banks, and more direct RMB settlement to reduce exchange-rate costs. The two also discussed transition finance, especially for hard-to-abate sectors like steel and cement, and how China is making taxonomies usable through disclosure, government demonstration, and incentives.

The conversation concluded with cross-border cooperation examples: sustainable agriculture with Brazil, low-carbon steel with Australia, green data centres, and the newly launched Green Accelerator (GA). A proposed Indonesia–Singapore green hydrogen project illustrates how standards, trade, technology and finance can be connected across borders.

For the full text：https://www.ifs.net.cn/funding/viewpoints