The Carbon Trust helps launch the EBRD’s Green Technology Selector in China

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China city solar panels

The GTS is an online shopping-style platform that connects vendors of the best green technologies with forward-thinking financial institutions, businesses and homeowners.

First developed in 2018 by the EBRD, there are now more than 22,000 products listed on the GTS, ranging from heat pumps and solar panels to no-till seeding machines. EBRD also recently launched an associated app to enable green technology buyers to quickly identify vendors and manufacturers.

The GTS is recognised as a world-leading tool that supports financial institutions (FIs) in emerging economies to de-risk and scale up their investments in green projects. FIs in over 25 countries supported by the EBRD – banks, leasing companies, microfinance institutes – are now referring to GTS as the technical eligibility assessment tool to develop green financial products. 

Based on the Carbon Trust’s track record of designing and managing the UK’s Energy Technology List (ETL), the EBRD and the Carbon Trust are now working together to expand the GTS globally. This collaboration has started in China, a country that is both the world’s leading technology manufacturer and at the centre of rapidly expanding green finance market.

The Carbon Trust Beijing office is now working with a number of industry associations to support Chinese green technology manufacturers to register their companies, shops and products on the GTS. This will promote the export from China of high-performing green technologies, while also populating the China page of the GTS that can be used by financial institutions, businesses and homeowners across the world’s second largest economy. 

The expansion of the GTS into China is being funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) through the GEF-EBRD Global Energy Efficiency Financing Framework (GE2F2). The GTS and the associated app have been developed by the EBRD with the support of donor funding from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance.

Chris Stephens, Director – Asia at the Carbon Trust said:

“Having a standardised tool like the GTS is central to scaling up green financing globally and is especially helpful in giving confidence in small- and medium-sized green investment opportunities in emerging markets. We are very excited to be supporting its expansion into China to promote the international trade of green products and strengthen this key green finance market. Equally, we see significant opportunity to expand the GTS in to other countries and look forward to a broader collaboration with the EBRD to deliver this goal.”