National Green Finance Standard in Russia 2020 - a Breakthrough in Green Finance Regulations?

The article is devoted to the analysis of VEB.RF's “Methodological Recommendations for Green Finance” published on July 13, 2020, named by many Russian experts as the National Green Finance Standard of Russia. This document was in-tended to define the criteria for “green” projects and financial instruments for enterprises and banks and, ultimately, describe the architecture of the national sys-tem of such financing. A similar document - “Taxonomy Regulation” - was adopted in the European Union on June 18, 2020. In this regard, a comparative analysis of the above issues is of particular importance. The purpose of the article is to form the idea of the national standard of “green” finance in Russia based on the analysis of regulations and scientific sources. The applied methods are empirical methods of comparison, description, interpretation, and theoretical methods of formal and dialectical logic. The following private scientific methods were used: legal-dogmatic and the method of interpretation of legal norms. The study showed that the main financial regulator in Russia is the Central Bank, and it is the regulatory documents of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation that should create a national standard for green financing. Without the approval of the Central Bank, VEB.RF’s guidelines are turning into just another methodology of the rating agency.