Paris makes 15 recommendations to promote France as the capital of green investment

Paris Europlace, the organisation that promotes the French capital as a financial centre, has issued a major new report listing 15 recommendations to promote France to become the capital of green investment. The report comes as a number of capital cities jostle to promote themselves as leading green finance centres, notably London, Dublin and Luxembourg. In a recent speech, Ségolène Royal, France’s Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, said Paris aimed to become the ‘home’ of green finance: Link
The new report co-ordinated by Philippe Zaouati, CEO at Mirova, the specialist French sustainability fund manager, comes out as Morocco’s Climate Finance Day takes place today (November 4), co-organised by Paris Europlace and Casablanca Finance City, which preceeds the opening of COP22 in Marrakech on November 7.
Among its 15 recommendations are the launch of an index of world financial centres based on their promotion and work on green finance. Another is the creation of a Carbon Disclosure Initiative to capitalise on the country’s new ESG regulation, Article 173 of the country’s new Law on Energy Transition for Green Growth (LTECV), a comply-or-explain mechanism that requires investors to report on how they integrate ESG into their investment processes, outline the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of their investments and contribute to the financing of a low carbon economy.The report also calls for a working group to be set up to research green infrastructure financing, look at innovative green finance products and draw together public-private partnerships for environmental investment.
It also calls for an annual Climate Finance Day conference and a yearly rotating presidency role for a committee titled: ‘Paris Green and Sustainable Finance Initiative’. Zaouati said: “Perhaps more than in other areas, acting to develop green, long-term finance requires strong collaboration between public, private and civil society actors. It’s this partnership approach we want to promote with this report. It opens the way to our ambition to make Paris a European engine for green finance.”
France’s financial lobby groups for bankers, insurers, asset managers, private equity firms, financial analysts, recently backed the French government’s moves to promote ESG reporting and green/SRI finance labels, in a major show of support by the country’s financial services sector.
Link to the Paris Europlace report