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Green Bonds and REITs: A Match That Pays Social and Quarterly Dividends

If fighting climate change while making some change in an investment sounds like a good plan, consider real estate investment trusts (REITs) that have issued green bonds. Green bonds, simply put, are debt instruments issued by companies and public bodies to finance projects that have direct or indirect environmental benefits such as cleaner water and air. A Sept. 19 article in The Economist calls green bonds "the stars of climate finance," says that $271 billion of them were sold in 2019 and that COVID-19 has only slightly slowed the pace, and that they represent about 4% of total bond issuance worldwide.