Green Project Finance for Infrastructure and Building Construction: Instruments and Benchmarks

AbstractIt is counterintuitive that both the practice and research on green project finance for infrastructure and building construction are ascendant and still have limited precedents, considering that individually, the two parts (i.e., project finance and sustainability in the built environment) are both familiar to the communities. To narrow the gap and facilitate the financing of the built environment’s sustainable transformation, this study systematically reviews the common instruments for financing green infrastructure and building projects. Benchmarking questions distinguishing the profile of green project finance from common construction project finance are developed based on the literature review and then are used for empirical benchmarking with comprehensive financial data. In addition to yielding affirmative answers to the benchmarking questions, the benchmarking indicates that there is no evidence providing green project finance of infrastructure and building construction the immunity from the common critic, that is, greenwashing.