Greening (runnable) brown assets with a liquidity backstop

Summary

Focus

The momentum toward greening the economy brings with it a number of new transition risks, which, if not properly addressed, may threaten financial stability. In particular, the expectation that other investors may exclude high carbon corporate emitters from their portfolio creates a risk of runs on brown assets. Understanding and acknowledging this new source of financial instability is essential for government agencies in charge of preserving the soundness of financial systems.

Contribution

We analyse whether a market economy where polluting firms are subject to a run risk can sufficiently incentivise those firms to reduce their carbon emissions, and how the laissez faire allocation fares relative to one that could be provided by policymakers. We postulate that uncertainty on the level of carbon-emission intensity that will be tolerated by consumers, investors or regulators can result in runs on significant shares of financial assets. In this context, we propose a liquidity backstop facility that helps restore efficiency. We show how offering such a backstop, whose access fee is proportional to the carbon emission of corporates, can prevent such runs while greening output.

Findings

In anticipation of a risk of runs on brown assets and a resulting pooling equilibrium, low- and high-emissions firms are not easily differentiated by external investors. As a result, all firms face the same initial funding costs ahead of production, and some high-emissions firms will be unable to subsequently refinance their activity because investors will not take the risk of financing them.

The findings also show that a liquidity backstop – whose pricing takes the form of an access fee proportional to carbon emissions, and a borrowing rate that is independent of carbon emissions – helps in greening the economy, re-establishing production efficiency, while avoiding runs. The access fee incentivises the highest emissions firms to opt for cleaner technologies and to reduce their output while greener firms increase their scale of production.

Abstract

The momentum toward greening the economy implies transition risks that are new threats to financial stability. In particular, the expectation that other investors may exclude high carbon corporate emitters from their portfolio creates a risk of runs on brown assets. We show that runs can be contained by a liquidity backstop with an access fee that depends on the firm's carbon intensity, while the interest rate on the liquidity lent through this facility is independent from its carbon intensity.

JEL codes: G01, G18, G28

Keywords: green finance, financial stability, bank runs, brown assets, liquidity provision