As an investor in the Green Century Balanced Fund, your money supports a green bond that helps improve the public transportation in the San Francisco region with the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) rail system.
BART’s green bonds, including this one held in the Green Century Balanced Fund, were among the first public transit bonds in the country to be certified under the Climate Bonds Initiative’s Low Carbon Transport Standard.
The accessible transit system encourages people to stroll, bike or carpool to stations, sparks more centralized development for housing and shops, and helps create walkable communities that depend less on cars.
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As of 2023, BART carried about 156,000 people on a typical weekday, resulting in the savings of about 31,000 gallons of gas and directly reducing CO2e emissions by more than 600,00 pounds per week.
For example, while a typical car gets about 23 miles per gallon, a BART rider gets the equivalent of 83 miles per gallon.
In an effort to reduce its carbon footprint, about 88 percent of BART’s contracted electric supply was greenhouse gas free.
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Along with the system-wide improvements that included sustainably renovated stations, BART’s new rail cars are electric and built of lightweight aluminum exterior to cut energy use. The aluminum will also be recycled when the cars are retired. The cars also have white roofs to reflect heat and use LED lighting to save on energy costs.
The fixed income portion of Green Century’s Balanced Fund boasts more than 70% of green bonds. Many of these investments create clean or promote energy efficient transportation that offer an alternative to hundreds of cars on crowded city roads and auto pollution.
A sustainable investment strategy which incorporates environmental, social and governance criteria may result in lower or higher returns than an investment strategy that does not include such criteria.