Green Bonds – A beneficial financing form?

Sammanfattning: Title: Green bonds – A beneficial financing form? Purpose: The purpose of this master thesis was to examine housing companies reasoning behind issuing green bonds for financing their projects. What advantages and disadvantages that are currently connected to green bonds and if the green bond market can motivate companies to build more sustainable.  Methodology: This thesis is built upon a literature review and a quantitative study, where the data was collected through a questionnaire sent out to various housing companies on the Swedish real estate market.  Findings: Weather or not green bonds is a beneficial financing for seems to be individual for each company. Companies with more ambitious sustainability goals seems to be more likely to issue green bonds. The positives with issuing green bonds is that the company is able to reach out to new investors and that the gain positive attention from important stakeholders. The current downsides with the financing form is that the issuing costs are currently higher for green bonds than conventional bonds and many companies still believe that they are not getting enough compensations for the higher costs. With this in regard it is not very likely that the green bond market can be a motivation for actors to build more sustainable. Today there are actors that do have both the financial capability and the projects needed to enter the market, that still chooses not to. Therefore, it is hard to believe that the green bond market in its current state will drive green investments that wouldn’t have been financed in any other way.