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?
The closet thing I've discovered is a bond on the Australian stock exchange, titled ASX:AEBD
It's invested in the Australian federal government, several provinces of Canada (Ontario, BC, and Quebec), and a few other places I don't recognize:
The fund manager (Betashares) describes the fund as follows:
Though not municipal, this same company also manages another fund (GBND), whose description says
The GBND fund appears to only include the EU and European countries (namely France, Italy, and Germany), but the mention of Climate Bonds Initiative might be key to discovering similar funds that invest in actual green cities' bonds