France has raised 4 billion euros. The bond has a 15-year maturity and a yield of -0.415%, harmonised with the European consumer price index. The order book was nearly 7-times oversubscribed at over €27 billion. More than 220 investors participated. Lead managers included Barclays, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole CIB, Natixis and Société Générale.

French energy company EDF said that the 3.2 GW project in the UK will cost £25bn-£26bn. It was estimated at £18bn when it received the go-ahead in 2016. The first reactor unit is now scheduled to start operating in June 2027 due to Covid-related delays. EDF and its junior partner, China’s CGN, receive a guaranteed price of £92.50 per MWh.

Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark plan to build 150 GW of offshore wind capacity in the North Sea to help achieve the EU's climate goals and, eventually, break away from Russian energy. The ambition is also to use the power to make hydrogen and green fuels for heavy industries and transportation that cannot easily be directly electrified.

Ecu has been accepted into the Venture Development programme of R3, which started as an IT development consortium of banks and other companies in the finance sector. R3 has developed the Corda distributed ledger technology, now used by the major European securities exchanges in Zürich, Frankfurt and London for trading digital securities.

The torrent of cash for anything related to cutting carbon emissions mean green bonds will remain a cheaper source of financing. The greenium will hover around 4 to 5 basis points for the rest of the year. Barclays also found no evidence of green-bond outperformance in the recent debt selloff. ESG bond indexes have underperformed broader gauges.

The proposed green bond rules were designed to help facilitate the financing of sustainable investments through the creation of a ‘gold standard’ for how companies and public authorities can use green bonds to raise funds on capital markets, while meeting rigorous sustainability requirements and protecting investors from greenwashing.

Britain will launch a publicly-owned system operator to take over some of the responsibilities of the National Grid. Britain is striving to reach net zero emissions by 2050, a goal that will require a huge increase in renewable electricity. Shares in National Grid were down around 0.7% early on Wednesday, slightly underperforming the wider index.

All but one of Britain's existing nuclear power stations will be decommissioned by 2030. Mr Johnson and Mr Kwarteng want to increase country's existing 7 GW of nuclear capacity to 24 GW by 2050 with a government-owned company, but they have been battling with Rishi Sunak for vast sums at a time when the Chancellor is resisting further public spending.

A benchmark for government and corporate debt total returns, has fallen 11% from a high in January 2021. Rising inflationary pressure around the world is fueling concerns. For investors, it means the allure of holding debt is diminishing given how sensitive valuations are to interest rates. Corporate bonds are particularly vulnerable to mounting stagflation.

This investment follows the Euroclear-led CBDC experiment to settle French government bonds on DLT. Market participants have demonstrated a wider acceptance of DLT and its potential for transforming global capital markets. Regulators are starting to create the conditions to allow for its use in securities markets, such as the EU DLT pilot regime.

The good news is it possible, the bad news is that it will be very expensive and highly disruptive. There is probably about 300TWh in storage in Europe right now meaning we need to find 1,300TWh over the next 12 months. We are seeing unprecedented volatility in oil, coal, gas and electricity markets which is a reflection of the high level of risk around energy.

As of December 2021, ESG funds had $2.7 trillion assets under management ; 81% were in European funds. ESG funds perform poorly in financial terms and they don’t deliver better ESG performance either, as reported by the researchers of Columbia University, London School of Economics and the European Corporate Governance Institute.