'Green bonds' are ten times better for the planet than people think, but current corporate reports are totally missing the data.
March 20, 2026
Original Paper
The Carbon Footprint of Green Bonds: Evidence from Project-Level Data
SSRN · 6441539
The Takeaway
Critics often claim green bonds are 'greenwashing' because a company's total emissions rarely drop after issuing them. This research shows the impact is massive at the project level, but it is 'diluted' and hidden once combined with the company’s broader operations.
From the abstract
We introduce a measure of green bonds' carbon footprint based on project-level data and industry guidelines. This measure captures the avoided emissions generated by green-bondfinanced projects and is constructed by estimating both project emissions and the relevant counterfactual emissions. Using this metric, we revisit the inconclusive literature that evaluates corporate green bonds using firm-level emissions data. We derive several important insights. First, green bonds deliver meaningful env