One of Standard Chartered’s top executives in China sees green finance and green industries playing a defining role in the Chinese economy over the foreseeable future.
“Over the next forty years, green industries will be the most defining blue water sectors,” said Xie Wen (谢雯), vice-president at Standard Chartered (China), during the keynote speech delivered at the “2021 China Smart Manufacturing and Semiconductor Industry Summit” (2021中国智造业年会暨半导体产业峰会) held on 12 October in the Guangdong province city of Dongguan.
According to Xie China’s drive to achieve the ambitious emissions mitigation targets of peak carbon by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060 will provide major challenges and opportunities for green finance and investment.
“At present the annual average carbon neutrality financing gap is 2.5 trillion yuan, so the space is extremely large,” said Xie.
“There is still great room for development in term of overall green finance products and solution plans…facing the massive and challenging twin carbon targets, we see ample challenges and hidden commercial opportunities.”
Xie further pointed out that China’s carbon emissions market, which was first launched nationally on 16 July, is still in an early stage of development, with huge room for growth given that total transactions only account for 0.3% of total emissions volume.
The general use of the renminbi for clean energy pricing is also expected by Standard Chartered to drive the internationalisation of the renminbi.
