The Finish EU presidency, the European Commission and the European Parliament on Monday evening all agreed on the common classification system for environmentally-sustainable investment. The final confirmation will be done by EU ambassadors on Wednesday and by a plenary vote that will probably take place in January 2020.

Prodded by their own governments into slashing emissions and getting out of coal, European companies are a step ahead of their US counter parts. “There’s definitely a trend here,” said Peter Henry, managing director at HW Anderson Ltd. in New York. “There are opportunities for them to apply similar strategies that have worked in Europe.”

Germany gets 23.5% of its energy from wind. But in the first half of 2019, only 35 wind turbines were added — an 82% drop compared with 2018. Last year was bad, too: Just 743 turbines were added, compared with 1,792 in 2017. Local opponents of the wind farms often go to court to stall new developments or even have existing towers dismantled.

Report released by the Rocky Mountain Institute. Public policy, manufacturing, research and development, and economies of scale will drive battery performance higher while pushing costs as low as $87/kWh by 2025 (currently $187/kWh). These changes are already contributing to cancellations of planned natural-gas power generation.

The market for green bonds has exploded, with global sales increasing by more than 300% in the past five years to reach $162 billion this year. The Bloomberg Barclays Euro Green Bond Index shows a total return of 18% since 2014. Investors appear entirely unwilling to forgo wealth to invest in environmentally sustainable projects.

The European Central Bank has been buying the debt as part of its asset repurchase program. Hungary and France’s central banks have each created funds dedicated to ecological investments. The Bank for International Settlements started an open-ended fund for central bank investments in green bonds last month.

“The nuclear sector has to get back on track. It’s a question of energy sovereignty...” Le Maire told a news conference, after unveiling a government-backed audit of setbacks at EDF’s Flamanville 3 nuclear project in France. It has also had to hike its cost estimates for the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant it is building in Britai

Germany’s wind power industry could shed about 40% of its jobs because of sliding interest among investors to build turbines on land. Net new onshore capacity dropped from 5.3 GW in 2017 to 2.4 GW last year and to a mere 0.3 GW in the first six months of 2019. Far short of the 4.7 GW needed for Germany to create a 65% share for renewables.

An influx of new offshore wind farms around the world is set to draw $840 billion of investments over the next two decades. Additions of 20 GW of new offshore capacity a year still won’t be enough to hit global climate targets. Capacity additions would need to be near to 40 GW a year in the next decade, adding over $1.2 trillion of investment.

Four in five of Europe’s coal-fired power plants are unprofitable. Coal-fired power has been hit by the rising price of EU carbon credits. The cost of these credits has tripled since 2017. Of the EU’s 154.4GW of coal capacity, 45 per cent is already scheduled to shut down by 2030, with 13 member states committed to a complete phasing out by then.

EDF issued a warning on Wednesday that its Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset, UK may see construction costs dramatically increase. An even longer delay can be found at a plant being built in Finland. In 2011 the profits across the industry from energy generation were £2.4 Billion ($3.0 billion) to just £751 million ($931 million) in 2018.

At $121 billion, worldwide green bond sales this year are already 57% higher than at this point in 2018. Sweden’s longest-dated issue currently in existence is a 3.5% bond repayable in 2039 that yields about zero. Sweden should expand its horizons by offering investors the longest-dated green bond ever seen.