(Bloomberg) --
Incoming European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has hinted she may want to harness the institution's asset purchase program to fight climate change. Using the ECB's balance sheet for anything other than the pursuit of monetary stability would be a big departure from traditional policy making but if the political will is there, Bloomberg Economics thinks it will happen. Still, this will have to wait for an EU definition of green assets, on which BE expects swift progress in early 2020. Based on the widely agreed standards developed by the ICMA, BE estimates the universe of green bonds eligible to the ECB programme is small, but growing rapidly -- about 63 billion euros ($70 billion), half of which might already be owned by the central bank.
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