Sean Kidney

CEO, Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI)

Nominated by Irish GBC (IGBC).

Sean is the CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI), an international NGO working to mobilize global capital for climate action. Sean co-founded CBI in 2009, and has served as CEO ever since. He has led CBI to become the gold standard verifier of sustainable bonds worldwide and develop a market for sustainable investments. CBI’s work and global advocacy has resulted in billions of dollars being directed to create a more sustainable real estate industry.

As CEO of CBI, Sean works at the intersection of capital investment and the task of addressing climate change. Over the past 10 years the CBI has been instrumental in growing a global green bonds market from US$10 billion of issuance a year to US$1 trillion of issuance a year, along with various collateral benefits arising, from pro-active regulator and central bank action to support green issuance, to government green finance programmes that feed into burgeoning sovereign green bond issuance. It has done this with the support of an investor partnership programme that now represents US$43 trillion of assets under management.

As part of his work Sean has served in a variety of roles including Consultant on green bonds to the United Nations Secretary General, Member of the European Union’s Platform on Sustainable Finance, Member of the Peoples Bank of China’s Green Finance Task Force, Member of the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Sustainable Finance Advisory Panel, Member of the European Advisory Board of the SMARTER Finance for Families (energy efficiency) initiative, and Member of the Energy Efficient Mortgages Initiative of the European Mortgage Federation.

Sean’s expertise on driving capital markets and the global network of property sector green bond investors he engages with, will provide valuable sustainable finance and investment insights to WorldGBC, bringing additional credibility and the opportunity to influence the sector.