Purpose

One of the major negative effects of the Coronavirus outbreak worldwide has been reduced investment in green energy projects and energy efficiency. The main purpose of this paper is to study the role of green bond proposed by the World Bank in 2008, as a reliable instrument to enhance the capital flow in energy efficiency financing and to develop green energy resources during and post the current challenging global time.

Design/methodology/approach

We model energy efficiency for 37 members of OECD through a panel data framework and quarterly data over 2007Q1–2020Q4.

Findings

The major results reveal the positive impacts of issued green bonds and regulatory quality index on energy efficiency, while any increase in inflation rate and urbanization decelerates the progress of raising energy efficiency.

Practical implications

As highlighted concluding remarks and policy implications, it can be expressed that the tool of green bond is a potential policy to drive-up energy efficiency financing and enhancing environmental quality during and post-COVID period. It is recommended to follow green bond policy with an efficient regulation framework and urbanization saving energy planning.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors' knowledge, although a few scholars have investigated the impacts of COVID-19 on green financing or examined the energy efficiency financing, the matter of modeling energy efficiency–green bond relationship has not been addressed by any academic study. The contributions of this paper to the existing literature are: (1) it is the first academic study to discover the relationship between energy efficiency and green bond in OECD countries, (2) since our empirical part provides estimation results based on quarterly data covering the year of 2019 and 2020, it may offer some new policy implications to enhance energy efficiency financing in and post-COVID period, (3) furthermore, we consider energy efficiency indicator (mix of industrial, residential, services and transport energy efficiency) as the dependent variable instead of using the simple energy intensity variable as a proxy for energy efficiency.

中文翻译：

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能效融资和绿色债券的作用：后疫情时期的政策

目的

全球冠状病毒爆发的主要负面影响之一是减少了对绿色能源项目和能源效率的投资。本文的主要目的是研究世界银行于 2008 年提出的绿色债券的作用，作为在当前充满挑战的全球时期和之后促进能效融资中的资本流动和开发绿色能源的可靠工具。

设计/方法/方法

我们通过面板数据框架和 2007 年第一季度至 2020 年第四季度的季度数据为 37 个经合组织成员国的能源效率建模。

发现

主要结果揭示了发行绿色债券和监管质量指数对能源效率的积极影响，而通胀率和城市化进程的任何上升都会减缓能源效率的提高进程。

实际影响

正如总结性发言和政策含义所强调的那样，可以说绿色债券工具是在 COVID 期间和之后推动能源效率融资和提高环境质量的潜在政策。建议遵循具有高效监管框架和城镇化节能规划的绿色债券政策。

原创性/价值

据作者所知，尽管少数学者研究了 COVID-19 对绿色融资的影响或研究了能源效率融资，但任何学术研究都没有解决能源效率-绿色债券关系建模问题。本文对现有文献的贡献在于：（1）它是第一个发现 OECD 国家能源效率和绿色债券之间关系的学术研究，（2）因为我们的实证部分提供了基于季度数据的估计结果，涵盖了2019 年和 2020 年，它可能会提供一些新的政策启示，以加强新冠疫情期间和后时期的能效融资，(3) 此外，我们考虑能效指标（工业、住宅、