Are there any investment funds (ETFs or mutual funds) which exclusively purchase municipal bonds in “green” cities?
Most mutual funds seem to profit from unethical companies. Genocide (Lockheed, Google), Climate Catastrophe (BP, ExxonMobil), Slavery (Verizon, Walmart). Murder (UnitedHealth, Dow Chemical).
It seems like municipal bonds might be one of the more ethical ways to invest money.
Specifically, I’m looking to invest in cities that are building-out infrastructure that will lead to an elimination on their dependence on fossil fuels. For example:
- Closing roads and building bicycle lanes.
- Building electrified trains and dedicated bus lanes.
- Passing laws to establish a maximum number of parking spots per person.
- Mixed Zoning (walkable cities)
- Banning fossil fuel power plants while building hydro/solar/wind/geothermal
- Passing laws to heavily tax carbon emissions
- And, of course, cities that invest in education usually get a great ROI.
Cities that come to mind include Paris and New York.
I could try to do all the research myself, and find a bunch of other cities that are on the right path -- but that seems like a full-time job, and it’s probably better to just have a fund manager do this research for us.
Are there already any funds that invest in municipal bonds exclusively in “green” cities?
Sounds like a great idea. If there is anything structured in place, “ESG” (environment, social, governance) would be the keyword. Some time ago individual equities got ESG scores for ethics. It was gamified by marketing. E.g. Microsoft got a high ESG score despite being atrocious. But Canada is taking real moves toward killing off the greenwashing and forcing provable measurements. So we can perhaps expect ESG figures to be relatively honest in Canada.
From there, I have no idea about mutual funds and I did not even know that muni bonds existed. It would indeed be useful to invest in green cities. It would be quite hard to find them in the US. But I don’t suppose anything stops a US resident from investing in Copenhagen bonds, if they exist.
I think it was Atlanta, GA which built a pedestrian + cycling ring in the city. I don’t know if that was just a 1-off gesture move, or if they continued to develop along those lines.