Developer Seán Mulryan's Ballymore and Singaporean property group Oxley have secured a €77.3 million so-called green loan from HSBC Ireland to help fund the construction of three offices in their high-profile Dublin Landings project in the city's north docklands.
HSBC Ireland said the loan was Ireland's first green loan principles-compliant facility, meeting standards set by the Loan Market Associations of Europe and Asia in March last year to support environmentally sustainable economic activity.
“We strive to reduce our carbon emissions and Dublin Landings will be finished to the highest international standards,” said Mr Mulryan, nothing that the project is being built to the internationally recognised Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum standard.
Providers of green loans must track the use of the funds to ensure they are directed only to suitable projects.
The development comes on the eve of major conference on sustainable and climate finance in Dublin on Thursday, which has been convened by the Department of Finance. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned last October that the world has only about a dozen years to keep global temperatures to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Sustainable finance is expected to play a pivotal role in enabling countries to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to keep temperature increases between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees.
The conference will see figures from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the European Investment Bank, alongside BlackRock, BNP Paribas and SEB, discuss how to unlock global capital to create investments to pay for the projects aimed at tackling climate change.
It is estimated that the world needs $90 trillion of sustainable investment in cities, land use and energy by 2030 and green loans can play a significant part in this," said HSBC Ireland chief executive Alan Duffy.
“Stakeholders want to understand that the companies they work with and invest in are working to reduce their carbon emissions and their impact on the environment.”
