Put simply, our global community is nowhere near investing enough in the projects and programs that we need to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and to achieve the poverty reduction and other humanitarian objectives at the heart of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The money is there in the pension funds, insurance company and bank reserves, sovereign wealth funds, endowments and foundations and individual savings that make up the global savings pool. And one of their largest allocations is to liquid, rated bonds that provide bond issuers with long-term financing at low cost.

But we haven’t been able to access the bond markets for these key projects and programs at nearly the scale – and the affordable cost - we need.

The reasons are clear: Investors see the risks as too high, and the scale too small. If investors engage, it’s from the private equity, private credit or direct infrastructure allocations in their portfolios – allocations are modest and the returns expected are much higher.

Bringing these projects and programs to the point at which they can attract commitments from investors’ bond portfolios can happen, but it’s a heavy lift: Market efficiencies and low interest rates have meant that investment banks can’t afford to put in the effort needed, and development finance institutions have limited capital and concentrate on creating assets for their own balance sheets.

PTAG’s conviction is that a small team of experienced bond market and project finance professionals, focused exclusively on preparing key projects and programs to access liquid, rated bond markets, can go far towards solving this problem.