Düsseldorf/Münster, May 8, 2024
NRW.BANK has successfully placed its 15th Green Bond on the capital market. The first Green Bond issued by the promotional bank in 2024 has a volume of 1 billion euros and was three times oversubscribed. NRW.BANK will use the current Green Bond primarily to refinance projects in the renewables sector.
“With our Green Bonds, we are helping to shape a sustainable future. They enable investors to participate in North Rhine-Westphalian projects that have a particular environmental benefit,” says Michael Stölting, member of NRW.BANK’s Managing Board. “In this way, we create sustainable income and help our federal state achieve its climate goals.”
The current Green Bond will be used primarily to promote the development of renewable energies. Almost 650 million euros will be used to finance wind farms and photovoltaic plants. A further 240 million euros will support clean transport projects such as climate-friendly trams and hydrogen buses. Some 66 million euros will be invested in the energy-efficient refurbishment of buildings, while 51 million euros will be spent on energy-efficiency measures such as the expansion of district heating in NRW. Funds in the amount of 61 million euros will be invested in the renaturation of the Emscher and Lippe rivers.
The effectiveness of these investments is confirmed not least by the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, which recently published an analysis of the two NRW.BANK.Green Bonds issued in 2022. According to these calculations, the projects refinanced under the 2022 NRW.BANK.Green Bonds will save greenhouse gases equivalent to around 3.2 million tons of CO2 over the ten-year term of the bonds.
The 15th Green Bond now issued by NRW.BANK brings the total volume of NRW.BANK.Green Bonds to 9 billion euros. The issue was lead managed by Crédit Agricole, Commerzbank, DZ BANK and Landesbank Baden-Württemberg. The bond is listed at the stock exchanges in Düsseldorf and Luxembourg under ISIN DE000NWB0AV0. The minimum denomination of the seven-year bond is 1,000 euros.
With sustainability principles in mind, NRW.BANK has issued its own Green Bonds since 2013 and started issuing Social Bonds in 2020. The Bank’s green funding curve offers funding recipients the opportunity to finance projects that make a substantial contribution to climate action within the meaning of the EU taxonomy at particularly favourable conditions. This green curve is laid down in NRW.BANK’s sustainability strategy. The same applies to the focus of the capital market business, which is based on the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), which NRW.BANK signed in December 2020. The PRI membership is a further contribution to the integrated sustainable orientation of the Bank’s capital market business.
For more information on the NRW.BANK.Green Bond, visit https://www.nrwbank.de/en/about-us/investor-relations/green-bonds/. To learn more about sustainability at NRW.BANK, see https://www.nrwbank.de/en/about-us/sustainability/.
NRW.BANK - the promotional bank for North Rhine-Westphalia
NRW.BANK is the promotional bank of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). In close partnership with its owner, the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Bank helps to strengthen SMEs and start-ups, create affordable housing and improve public infrastructure. To fulfil its mandate, NRW.BANK offers people, enterprises and local authorities tailor-made financing solutions and advisory services. It cooperates with its financing partners, in particular all banks and savings banks, on a competition-neutral basis. NRW.BANK operates largely independently of the state budget. In order to accelerate the transformation processes, the promotional bank provides effective promotional impulses – for a sustainable, climate-neutral and digital North Rhine-Westphalia.