Sustainable Finance for Maritime Development: A Critical Analysis of Green Bonds in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan

This chapter started from an observation by Awaworyi (2017) according to which: “the achievement of a green economy requires a stable and growing financial system”. Particularly, it focuses on green bonds which, within the European Union, from the very early stages of drafting the post-COVID-19 recovery plan, has been attributed to a crucial role in achieving the objectives of the ecological transition. The research objective is twofold: (1) From the scientific point of view, in the context of sustainable finance, it provided an analysis of the literature on the main char-acteristics of green bonds highlighting the differences respect to conventional bonds and the effects of this new approach to finance on the decision-making and strategic process of individual investors and the business models of bank intermediaries, (2) For providing an application useful for all stakeholders involved in the maritime supply chain, it proposed an empirical reflection on the implementation of green finance to cold ironing technology in the maritime transport sector.