The amount of Green Eligible Expenditures to which the State's 2021 green bond issues will be matched will amount to €15 billion for the year 2021. This envelope, which amounted to €8 billion in 2018 and 2019, is therefore rising sharply with the attachment, in particular, of State support for renewable energies, previously financed by an earmarked tax.
As announced by Bruno Le Maire, Minister of the Economy, Finance and Recovery, on the occasion of Climate Finance Day on 29 October (see also the indicative financing programme 2021), AFT will create a second green bond this year, with a maturity of about twenty years, subject to market conditions. In addition, it will continue to tap its first green bond, issued for the first time in January 2017, in response to investor demand. All of these issues will be within the limit of the amount of Green Eligible Expenditures for 2021.
There are several sources of Green Eligible Expenditures for 2021. They mainly include budgetary and fiscal expenditures that will be carried out this year under the 2021 finance law passed by Parliament. They also correspond in part to Green Eligible Expenditures incurred in 2020 but which was not matched to Green OAT issuance last year: they may therefore be eligible in 2021, in accordance with the framework document for the State's green bonds.
The State's green debt securities will continue to contribute to the financing programme defined in the initial finance law for 2021 in the same way as the other OATs. The outstanding amount of the first Green OAT (OAT 1.75% 25 June 2039) currently stands at €27.4 billion.
Framework for Green Eligible Expenditures
France's Green Bonds programme targets State budget spending on climate change mitigation, adaptation to climate change, biodiversity protection and pollution control, in line with the Energy Transition and Green Growth Act and France's commitment to implement the Paris Climate Agreement. The selection grid for Green Eligible Expenditures is defined in the framework document mentioned above.
The projects corresponding to Green Eligible Expenditures are identified each year ex ante by an inter-ministerial working group under the aegis of the Prime Minister. In accordance with the commitments made at the time of the inaugural issue of the green OAT, France provides civil society and investors with detailed monitoring of the expenditures matched with its green debt issues, with (i) annual allocation and performance reports (the third of these reports, covering the year 2019, was published in July 2020), and (ii) environmental impact reports, the third of which, published in November 2020, is devoted to the public subsidy granted to the National Forestry Commission. The preparation of the reports on the environmental impacts of the expenditures is supervised by an Evaluation Council composed of independent experts of international repute.
Contact:
Agence France Trésor (AFT)
+33 1 40 04 15 50