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Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL)

 
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中国银行业贷款审批考虑环保新政

安德鲁•沃塞


中国最大的国有银行之一中国工商银行表示,在贷款审批过程中将考虑环保新政。剑桥大学可持续领导力研究所(CISL)通过其可持续金融中心参与就此项工作为中国工商银行提供建议。

本周,由G20财长和央行行长会议批准成立的绿色金融研究小组第二次会议在英国伦敦举行。

会上,中国工商银行(全球总资产规模最大的银行)介绍了他们的“环境压力测试”结果。该测试主要面向工行的高耗能贷款客户,测量向其提供贷款存在的风险。

此项研究已经对包括工商银行客户在内的一些高污染企业产生了重大影响。

近期发布的“十三五”规划中提出了比以往更有力的环保措施,包括在2015年的基础上分别将能源强度(单位GDP的能耗量)和碳排放强度降低15%和18%,并且对工厂颗粒物排放设定了限制。(单击此处查看环境目标列表)

在这种情况下,工商银行模拟了新环保政策可能对热能和水泥生产客户的财务业绩可能造成的影响。

研究结果显示,未来2到5年间,该行业内企业的信誉度可能会出现显著下降,中小型企业受影响尤为明显。

因此,工商银行开始重新审视其向特定企业提供贷款的政策,并专注思考如何为客户提供资助,帮助他们降低对环境的影响,从而减少此类风险。

剑桥大学可持续发展领导研究所近期发布的一项行业研究显示,有这种想法的远不止工商银行一家。

全球银行、投资机构以及保险公司都在开发通过各种复杂的方法,将环境威胁对财政造成的影响、以及以政策和商业为主导的应对工作纳入决策考量的范围。

下个月,由十位顶级投资机构组成的投资领导小组,将公布一套用于模拟不同的碳排放和能源消耗调节方案对企业利润造成影响的方法,目的是更好地对这些企业的资产价值进行分析。

越来越多的人开始重视这些问题,全球各地的监管机构也在密切关注着相关的动态。目前,中国人民银行和英格兰银行分别代表各自国家政府,共同主持G20绿色金融研究小组。

他们的目标是:从机制和市场层面找出金融系统中影响私人资本进入绿色投资领域的障碍。

英格兰银行行长、金融稳定委员会主席马克·卡尼明确表示,这一议程的核心问题在于:避免在向绿色经济的“无序”转型过程中出现可能危害金融稳定的风险。

这一点关系到了所有类型的企业。随着相关知识和方法的发展完善,金融机构能够将环境风险纳入投资决策考量的范围。想要借贷、维持其股权价值或者购买保险的企业会逐渐发现,环境因素管理已经成为决定他们资本成本、甚至是获取融资的关键因素。

美国上世纪30年代多个地区爆发沙尘暴的事件说明,环境条件的变化可能导致经济陷入低迷,使银行贷款蒙受重大损失。

更近一些的例子是2003年欧洲遭热浪袭击,农业部门为此损失高达150亿美元,法国电力价格更是飙升至原本的1300%。去年,高度依赖水电的巴西遭遇80年一遇的旱灾。巴西人口最为密集的3个州的工农业均遭受重创,电力价格上涨70%。

虽然我们对环境变化的实际影响造成的风险有了更好的理解,但也必须认识到,应对这些风险的过程中可能带来的金融风险。例如,为履行去年12月在巴黎气候大会上许下的承诺,政府突然引入的公共政策。

投资组合面临的风险还来自于技术突破、颠覆性的商业模式创新(如分散式能源发电)等引发的新的市场反应,这些反应都在努力适应这种新的环境背景,力求发展壮大。

在一些市场中,人们还是很担心企业因无法妥善应对环境风险而造成的债务风险。随着风险规模的逐渐扩大,其发生的可能性越来越大,关联性也越来越密切,这对我们如何理解和管理它们构成了切实的挑战。

对于金融公司来说,好消息是,解决这些新风险,以及和机遇相关的不确定性和投资期所遇问题的新技术在不断涌现。

未来有很多种可能,它们各自造成的影响也具有不确定性。为了更好地理解这些影响,有人选择采用保险行业相对熟悉的情境分析技术。与此同时,各国政府也正在努力以现有的“压力测试”技术为基础,把那些看似发生概率低、但影响却极为重大的风险纳入目前的决策考量因素之中。


 

本博客首次发表在“中外对话”( chinadialogue)上。

剑桥大学可持续领导力研究所(CISL)通过其可持续金融中心担任G20绿色金融研究小组的首席知识伙伴。


 

Major Chinese bank says new green policies have consequences for its lending decisions

Andrew Voysey, Director, Finance Sector 

31 March 2016


ICBC Bank, one of China’s largest state banks, reviews its lending criteria in light of the country's new environmental policies. The University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), through its Centre for Sustainable Finance, was involved in advising ICBC on this piece of work.

 

This week in London saw the second meeting of the ‘green finance’ study group, established by G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors.

At that meeting, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the largest bank in the world by total assets, presented the results of what it calls an ‘environmental stress test’ of risks within its lending book for some of its most energy intensive clients.

The research has serious consequences for high polluting companies that include some of the bank’s clients.

China’s 13th Five-Year Plan, unveiled last week, contains stronger environmental measures than ever before. New national targets include reducing energy intensity (energy consumed per unit of GDP) by 15%, reducing carbon intensity by 18% compared to 2015 and limits on particulate matter emissions from factories. (For a list of environmental targets see here).

In this context, the bank modelled the impact of possible new Chinese environmental protection policies on the financial performance of its thermal power and cement-producing customers.

The results reveal the possibility of marked deteriorations in the creditworthiness of some firms over the next two to five years. In particular, for small to medium sized companies in this sector.

This has triggered a review of ICBC’s appetite to lend to certain companies and focused its thinking on how it can finance solutions that help clients to mitigate these risks by reducing their environmental impact.

At the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership we have recently produced new industry research that shows ICBC is far from alone.

Banks, investors and insurance companies around the world are starting to develop sophisticated methodologies to factor into their decision-making the financial impacts of environmental threats as well as policy- and business-led efforts to address them.

Next month, a group of 10 leading investors, known as the Investment Leaders Group, will publish a methodology to model the impact of different carbon and energy regulation scenarios on firms’ margins with the objective of improving analysis of their equity price.

Minds are becoming focused on these issues and regulators around the world are paying close attention. Through the G20, it is the People’s Bank of China and Bank of England that are currently co-chairing the Green Finance Study Group on behalf of their respective governments.

Their goal is to identify institutional and market barriers preventing the financial system from mobilising private capital for green investment. 

Mark Carney, through both his role as the Governor of the Bank of England and Chair of the Financial Stability Board, has made it clear that he believes a core pillar of this agenda is avoiding possible financial stability risks that would arise from a ‘disorderly’ transition to the green economy.

This has powerful implications for firms of all types. As knowledge and methodologies develop to enable financial institutions to factor environmental risks into decisions about where they put their money, firms seeking to raise debt, maintain their equity value or buy insurance, may increasingly find that how they manage environmental factors is a decisive factor in their cost of, or even access to, capital.

Experience as far back as the 1930s, when dust bowls appeared in the United States, demonstrates how changing environmental conditions can trigger economic downturns and substantial losses on bank loans.

More recently, the 2003 European heatwave caused a US$15 billion loss to European agriculture sectors and electricity price spikes in France of 1300%. Last year, the worst drought for 80 years in hydropower-dependent Brazil hit industry and agriculture in the country’s three most populous states with electricity price rises of up to 70%.

While we are better at understanding the risks presented by the physical impacts of environmental change, we must recognise that financial risks can also arise from efforts to address them such as the abrupt introduction of public policy – for example as governments implement the commitments they made at the COP21 Paris Climate Conference in December.

Risks to portfolios also arise from new market responses such as technology breakthroughs and disruptive business model innovations (such as distributed energy generation), which seek to adapt or prosper in this new environmental context.

In some markets, there are also significant concerns about the liability exposures of firms which fail to act appropriately on environmental risks. However, the increasing scale, likelihood and interconnectedness of all of these risks pose real challenges for how we understand and manage them.

For finance firms, the good news is that techniques are emerging to tackle the uncertainty and time horizon issues associated with these new risks and opportunities.

Some are using scenario analysis techniques of the kind that is relatively familiar to the insurance industry, to help understand the uncertain impacts of a range of possible futures. Meanwhile, efforts are underway to build on ‘stress testing’ techniques that are already used to help bring risks that appear low in likelihood, but extreme in impact, into today’s decision-making.


This blog was first published on chinadialogue.

The University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), through its Centre for Sustainable Finance, is a lead knowledge partner for the G20 Green Finance Study Group.

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关于作者 | About the author

Andrew Voysey安德鲁·沃伊齐(Andrew Voysey)负责领导我们的金融部门团队,团队汇集了国际银行、保险公司和投资方,他们的目的是想建立一个重视可持续未来的金融体系。

Andrew Voysey leads our Finance Sector team convening international banks, insurers and investors who want to build a financial system that values a sustainable future.

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剑桥大学可持续领导力学院(CISL)博客刊登的雇员撰文不代表该学院或剑桥大学确认或赞成其观点。

Articles on the blog written by employees of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) do not necessarily represent the views of, or endorsement by, the Institute or the wider University of Cambridge.