More than $1 trillion of green bonds have been issued in the past two years, but maybe they should be called celadon — still green, probably, but barely so, Axios chief financial correspondent Felix Salmon writes.

  • They’re largely indistinguishable in price or documentation from their non-green counterparts.

Why it matters: Green bonds mean new money going into projects that will help save the planet. In that sense, they should be far more effective than ESG funds that simply buy pre-existing stocks from other investors.

  • But if you look at what the green bonds actually promise, it’s not very much.

What they found: Law professors Quinn Curtis, Mark Weidemaier and Mitu Gulati examined almost 1,000 green bond prospectuses over the past decade.

  • In 2022, just 28% of them included language actually holding the issuer to any green promises.
  • 61% specifically disclaimed any duty to invest the proceeds in a green manner.

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