More recent have been signs of a mainstreaming of green finance. The prestigious Finance Institute of the Development Research Center of the State Council (DRCFI) has been working with the International Institute for Sustainable Development, in association with the UNEP Inquiry and a group of international experts, in developing policy recommendations to advance green finance across China's financial system.

Further evidence of this mainstreaming has been the initiative of China's powerful central bank, the Peoples Bank of China, to establish a Green Finance Task Force, co-convened by the UNEP Inquiry, to identify practical steps to green China's financial market reform, which will report next month.

Green financing, according to new data developed through the DRCFI-led research launched at the China Development Forum, has increased at an annual growth rate of 23 percent in the five years to 2012, to about $260 billion in 2012, equivalent to more than 2 percent of GDP. Investment needs across key green sectors in China, the study estimates, will be about $460 billion per year from 2015 to 2020, or about $2.8 trillion from now to 2020, probably an under-estimate according to the authors. Two thirds of this will need to come from domestic and international financial and capital markets, given fiscal limitations and priorities.

The DRCFI-led report sets out wide-ranging recommendations to advance green finance in China, covering banking, investment, insurance and monetary policy.

In banking, recommendations include allowing eligible green loans to be excluded from the loan-to-deposit ratio indicators in banking risk management, offering preferential treatment for green assets in use as collateral against loans, introducing environmental stress tests as part of banking regulations and building up securitization channels for green credit.

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