Financing type: Subordinated loans
Programme: Programme for Environment and Climate Action (LIFE)
Main objective
Adequate tools and methodologies are needed to attract private finance to sustainable energy investments, in the energy efficiency segment. Some of these exist already and need to be fine-tuned and expanded. There is also a need to encourage investment alignment with and overachievement of the regulatory requirements and policies on sustainable finance, both on the supply and demand side of finance. Such alignment could in turn foster a massive upscale of retail investment in sustainable energy and via securitisation of sustainable energy assets access to the secondary market.
Proposals should address one or several of the following areas:
- Improving risk and sustainability assessment in the methods and tools of private investors by integrating the specificities of sustainable energy, including multiple benefits of energy efficiency. The focus can be at project level (e.g. creditworthiness analysis, quality standards, benchmarking data) or at portfolio level (e.g. internal ratings-based approaches, climate stress-testing, analysis of sustainable energy aspects of investment strategies, etc.).
- Labelling and certification schemes including methodologies and tools for benchmarking, tagging, monitoring of investment performance, and disclosure of investment data with a link to the EU sustainable finance legislation.
- Improving availability and interoperability for financial institutions of data collected e.g. from energy performance certificates, energy audits, smart meters, as well as energy and financial performance data of investment, connected wherever possible to the De-risking Energy Efficiency Platform (DEEP)[8].
- Development, evolution and/or distribution of financial products, including insurance, supporting the securitisation of sustainable energy assets with a particular focus on energy efficiency.
- Accelerating implementation or overachievement of EU sustainable finance requirements and policies by private investors and/or companies, including support to project developers in order to better meet expectations of private investors (e.g. development of closer connections between technical standards and accounting and disclosure reporting).
- Develop standards to increase the volume of energy efficiency and sustainable energy investments in financial institutions assets and lending portfolio, in line with the EU’s sustainable finance strategy and the EU Taxonomy Regulation.
- Capacity building at all levels of the private finance value chain, in the form of exchanges of best practices, development of training programmes and/or evolution and/or rollout of existing training programmes.
Who is eligible
Relevant stakeholders in the private finance value chain, including institutional investors, but also retail banking branches, brokers, fund managers, investment advisers, insurers