Artesian’s green and sustainable bond strategy has expanded to the US with the launch of the Carbon Collective Short Duration Green Bond ETF on the Nasdaq.
Artesian’s original A$ Green and Sustainable Bond Fund was launched in September 2020 with support from cornerstone investor Future Super. It has since raised capital from other reputable investors, including a $50 million investment from the Australian Government-backed Clean Energy Finance Corporation – the world’s largest ‘green bank’.
In the design of the latest ETF, the global alternative investment management firm has built on the innovation of its Australian product. This includes enhanced impact drivers, such as adding 400 tonnes of carbon abated per $1 million invested, or carbon yield, to the short-duration green-bond fund available to US investors.
Artesian Managing Partner and Co-Founder John McCartney said, “We believe that our Australian fund was one of the first short duration green bond funds globally.
“Observing its considerable success within the Australian dollar market, we have now introduced a similar fund, managed with comparable rigour, to the more expansive United States dollar market.”
In partnership with Carbon Collective
The ETF was launched in partnership with climate investment advisory firm, Carbon Collective, with the goal of broadening access to a diverse and liquid portfolio of green and sustainable public fixed income assets, while targeting the preservation of capital.
“Green bonds are one of the only publicly available, liquid asset classes with a quantifiable impact down to the project level,” McCartney said.
“When a corporation raises a green bond, the funds are kept segregated to only be used on green or sustainable projects. Each year, most green bond issuers publish a third-party audited sustainability report showing what projects the bond funds were used to fund.”
This drives impact through steering capital towards sustainability improvements, and might include energy efficiency, the transition to renewable power, water management or climate change adaptation, all of which have the potential to contribute to the Net Zero by 2050 goal.
Taking impact transparency to the next level
In the process of developing the foundational green and sustainable bond fund, the team at Artesian were struck by a frustrating lack of comparable and decision-useful data about the bonds they were analysing.
Individual issuers would publish information on the outcomes of their particular projects, but this data was rarely in a consistent format, and to satisfy the team’s approach they also had to assess the sustainability credentials of the issuer itself.
“Despite the extensive resources of major data providers like Bloomberg, S&P, and Moody’s, granular impact data at the bond level remains elusive. To deliver the detailed impact reports our investors expect, we recognised the need to develop this capability in-house,” said Artesian Head of Australian Fixed Income David Gallagher.
This led to the creation of the ‘carbon calculator dashboard’.
Carbon calculator dashboard
Using a proprietary methodology, the team pulled together a broad set of disparate data and distilled the most valuable insights into a user-friendly dashboard. It allows investors to see the total carbon emissions avoided and a brief description of the projects funded by each bond in the portfolio.
“Artesian’s goal is to deliver market-leading returns, both financial and strategic, to our investors. Our proprietary carbon calculator also provides investors a level of transparency about the impact of the bond portfolio,” said Managing Partner and Co-Founder Matthew Clunies-Ross.
The technology was implemented as part of the development of the green bond ETF, and now investors not only have access to real-time data on emissions avoided and contribution towards the SDGs, but they also have insights into the issuers’ broader sustainability performance.
More on Artesian can be found at https://www.artesianinvest.com/
The Impact Dashboard can be accessed here: https://bit.ly/ccsb-impact-dashboard
And more on the Short Duration Green Bond ETF (CCSB) is here: https://www.carboncollectivefunds.com/ccsb/