Category: Investments

A group of 19 major North American banks, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Royal Bank of Canada announced the launch of the RMA Climate Risk Consortium, aimed at developing climate risk management standards for banks to integrate throughout their operations. The coalition was established under the Risk Management Association (RMA), a not-for-profit professional association focused on advancing sound risk management principles in the financial services industry.

Nancy Foster, RMA President and CEO, said:

Global private capital investment firm The Carlyle Group announced commitments of over $100 million in energy transition-focused companies, including community-scale clean energy developer NineDot Energy and electric vehicle charging and services company Fermata Energy.

New York City-based NineDot develops community-scale clean energy generation and battery storage projects. According to NineDot, the Carlyle investment will achieve the company’s plan to develop, build, and operate more than 400 megawatts of clean energy systems by 2026, including a pipeline of battery storage projects in Queens, Staten Island, the Bronx, and Long Island.

Scotland announced today awards for the development of nearly 25 GW of offshore wind energy from its ScotWind seabed leasing round, generating £700 million in option fees for the Scottish government. Successful bidders included Iberdrola’s ScottishPower, bp, Shell, SSE, Falck, Ocean Winds, Vattenfall, and Macquarie’s GIG, TotalEnergies, and RIDG joint venture Offshore Wind Power.

The ScotWind bid process was run by Crown Estate Scotland, which manages land and property owned by the Monarch in right of the Crown, including rights for Scotland’s seabed. According to Crown Estate Scotland, ScotWind aims to significantly increase the amount of power generated from renewable energy, forming a major step in Scotland’s plans to achieve net zero emissions by 2045.

Norway-based energy company Equinor and energy giant bp announced the finalization of the Purchase and Sale Agreements (PSAs) with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) for Empire Wind 2 and Beacon Wind 1 projects, which will see the companies develop and supply offshore wind energy to the state in one of the largest renewable energy procurements to date in the U.S.

Siri Espedal Kindem, President of Equinor Wind US, said:

Energy giant bp announced today a new partnership with the Ministry of Energy and Minerals in Oman to explore the development of a ‘world-class scale’ renewable energy and green hydrogen development in Oman by 2030.

The planned initiative will include the development of onshore wind, solar and green hydrogen production. bp will begin by capturing and evaluating solar and wind data from 8,000km2 of land. The evaluation of the data will support the Government of Oman in approving the future developments of renewable energy hubs within this area.

The Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) announced today the appointment of Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Managing Director Ravi Menon as its new Chair, and Sabine Mauderer as Vice Chair. Ms. Mauderer is a Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank. Both positions are for two year terms, beginning January 2022.

The NGFS was established in 2017, with the purpose of helping to strengthen the global response required to meet the goals of the Paris agreement and to enhance the role of the financial system to manage risks and to mobilize capital for green and low-carbon investments in the broader context of environmentally sustainable development. Since its founding, the organization has grown from eight central banks and supervisors to more than 105 members and 16 observers across five continents.

In a joint announcement with French President Emmanuel Macron, global chemical and specialty materials company Eastman Chemical Company unveiled today plans to invest up to $1 billion in a material-to-material molecular recycling facility in France, capable of recycling up to 160,000 metric tonnes annually of hard-to-recycle plastic waste.

Expected to be operational by 2025, the plant would be the largest molecular recycling facility in the world. Eastman’s polyester renewal technology breaks down waste into its molecular building blocks for re-use, creating resins that are chemically indistinguishable from their legacy counterparts, while diverting waste plastic from landfills and reducing greenhouse gas emissions relative to traditional production. The process provides a key solution to recycle plastics that would typically be incinerated, enabling them instead to be reused continually. The technology enables the production of plastics with up to 80% lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than traditional methods.

This week in ESG news: State Street to require portfolio companies to provide climate disclosure; investors call to keep gas out of EU Taxonomy; Blackstone invests $3 billion in renewable energy developer Invenergy; Citi launches sustainability-linked supply chain finance program; IBM acquires sustainability data & analytics provider Envizi; BlackRock launches fund investing in net zero transition winners; Maersk pledges to provide net zero supply chains; SBTi outlines action plan for 2022; EY says companies gearing up for ESG-focused M&A; Iberdrola makes big move in UK solar market; HSBC launches ESG funds for fixed income investors, and more.

See below for the highlights of the past week, and get all your ESG news at ESG Today:

Global energy and electricity provider Iberdrola announced today a significant expansion of its presence in the UK renewable energy market, acquiring 17 solar photovoltaic (PV) projects with a combined capacity of more than 800 MW.

The transactions consist of two separate deals conducted by Iberdrola’s UK subsidiary ScottishPower, with 12 projects acquired from Elgin Energy, and remaining 5 projects from Lightsource BP. Following the transactions, Iberdrola’s market share in the solar PV sector will rise from 2% to 9%.

HSBC Asset Management (HSBC AM) announced today the launch of the HSBC Bloomberg Sustainable Global Aggregate 1-3y Bond UCTIS ETF, expanding its recently introduced suite of sustainable fixed income ETFs.

The new fund follows the launch earlier this month of the HSBC Bloomberg EUR Corporate Sustainable Bond UCITS ETF and the HSBC Bloomberg USD Corporate Sustainable Bond UCITS ETF.