Article published in French in Transitions, review of the Ecole nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, no. 1, 2021.
Beyond its indisputable success as a financial niche, the concept of “green finance” exhibits several inconsistencies that reflect tensions with the current rules of financial capitalism and question the potential of green finance to engineer and sustain societal change. However, it is the interaction between the development of green finance, the pressures from civil society that underlie changes in societal values, and the validation through tax and regulatory policies that holds a real potential for green transformation. Green finance brings a threefold contribution through that interaction: measure and communication of impacts, standardization of approaches, criteria and instruments, and progressive normalization of green investment principles. Yet, taxation and regulation play a crucial role in validating these evolutions and introducing supportive incentives.