“The short-term prices are the only price signals for long-term investment and this has to change,” said the CEO of nuclear power giant Electricite de France SA. He also urged EU nations to overcome their divisions concerning nuclear power when setting the financial rules, otherwise, only non-European banks will be able to finance new atomic plants.

The EU wants to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. That will not work without massive government investments and subsidies. The EU's “Green Deal” is the conceptual basis for this change. Indirectly, the state's policy will also trigger price inflation in “green” stocks. Green price bubbles could emerge at some point in the 2020s.

Banks have earned about $3.6 billion in fees in 2021 from arranging sales of ESG bonds for companies and governments. That is more than double the $1.6 billion banks pocketed so far this year from issuing debt for fossil-fuel companies. About $750 billion of ESG bonds have been issued this year, compared with $468 billion during all of 2020.

Institutional investors rushed to buy the UK’s first green sovereign bond with a 0.87% yield. The government will launch Green Savings Bonds through the national savings scheme. If it offered the “market-leading rate” for retail savings of 1.8%, the scheme would cost taxpayers £210m per year. Setting the rates lower could look unattractive to customers.

Wind farms were paid £1.85 million to shut down this week – at a time when consumers face huge rises in energy bills because of the spiralling cost of natural gas. The turbines were switched off, because the electricity they would have produced could not have reached the regions that needed it. Instead, electricity from gas-fired power stations was used.

On-demand power from storage is critical for preventing blackouts in Australia, which is increasingly dependent on wind and solar farms, from which energy is not always available. Hornsdale Power Reserve was called on to dispatch power in July to November 2019 during frequency disturbances, but that the energy was not supplied as needed.

Europe’s gas prices have more than tripled this year as top supplier Russia has been curbing the additional deliveries the continent needs to refill its depleted storage. Higher gas prices boosted the cost of producing electricity. Europe is short of gas and coal and if the wind doesn’t blow, the worst-case scenario could play out: widespread blackouts.

Global debt rose to a new record high of nearly $300 trillion in the second quarter of 2021. China has seen a steeper rise in its debt levels compared with other countries, while emerging-market debt excluding China rose to a fresh record high at $36 trillion. Debt among developed economies, especially the euro area, rose again in the second quarter.

Italy’s power prices are set to increase by 40% in the third quarter as a global natural gas supply crunch starts to impact the country ahead of the cold season. The increase is part of a rally across Europe that’s set to boost bills for consumers all over the continent. Coal reserves in European ports are also at the lowest level for this time of year since 2016.

SDX received the go-ahead from the Financial Market Supervisory Authority to operate a stock exchange and a central securities depository for digital assets in Switzerland. This authorization enables SDX to go live with a regulated, integrated trading, settlement, and custody infrastructure based on distributed ledger technology for digital securities.

Sustainable investment assets grew to $35.3 trillion globally last year. But the bulk of that money, some $25 trillion, is in a strategy called “ESG integration,” also known as “ESG consideration.” This means that managers are including ESG data in their financial models, but they’re not necessarily compelled to act on that information.

Poland draws 70% cent of its electricity from coal. Rising prices for EU carbon permits are putting pressure on its energy companies. The government plana to build the country’s first nuclear plant by 2033. Five more are due to follow by 2043. Location for the first reactor will be chosen this year and the project’s financing model and technology next year.