Green Financing in Russia: Current Status and Development Prospects

The aim of the work is to assess the current state of green financing in the Russian Federation and develop proposals to stimulate its further development. The methodological basis of the research was modern economic and mathematical methods: cluster analysis, building a regression model. This helped obtain results that possess both a certain scientific novelty and practical significance. The authors considered the evolution of scientific consensus about the concept of sustainable development and the formation of a green economy. They analyzed the current state of green financing in the Russian Federation for 2000–2018. Clustering the constituent entities of the Russian Federation by environmental investments and current environmental expenditures allowed for identifying the regions, leaders and outsiders in these processes, as well as revealing a high regional differentiation in financing green projects. The regression model helped prove that with increased investments in fixed assets aimed at environmental protection and rational use of natural resources by 1 million rubles, Russia’s GDP will increase by 0.1 billion rubles. Increasing current environmental expenditures in organizations by 1 million rubles will raise Russia’s GDP by 0.3 billion rubles. The authors concluded that to stimulate the development of green financing in Russia, it is necessary to implement policies providing for an appropriate regulatory framework; development and use of new tools for financing green projects; creation of a specialized banking institution.