Companies/ Energy Transition/ Sustainable Finance

Iberdrola Aims to Have Nearly Two-Thirds of its Debt as Green & Sustainable by 2025

Mark Segal April 28, 2021

Launches €5 billion sustainable promissory note program

As part of its strategy is for its financing structure to have an increasingly higher percentage of green and sustainable products, global energy and electricity provider Iberdrola has stated it expects green and sustainable products to account for 63% its debt by 2025. The company stated that 100% of its credit lines and 70% of its hybrid bonds will meet these characteristics in 2021.

The target was provided with the company’s launch of a €5 billion sustainable promissory note program, the largest ever for a Spanish company. The program marks an expansion of Iberdrola’s Euro Commercial Paper (ECP) for issuing short-term promissory notes in the Euromarket, increasing it from €3 billion, and linking the debt to environmental, social and governance factors encompassing five UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The ESG goals included in the new sustainable finance instrument include an environmental commitment to reduce emissions intensity to 100 g/kwh by 2022, a social goal to increase the percentage of women in leadership positions to reach 25% in 2022, and governance pledges to apply 11 recommendations from the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).

Iberdrola’s sustainable finance target comes as the company has recently embarked on a major investment initiative aiming to significantly grow the its renewable energy base. In November, Iberdrola launched a €75 billion investment plan for the 2020-2025 period. The plan includes massive investments over the next five years in renewable energy, with the company anticipating nearly doubling its renewables capacity by 2025.

Mark founded ESG Today following a 20 year career in investment management and research. Prior to founding ESG Today, Mark worked at Delaney Capital Management (DCM) in Toronto, Canada, most recently as the firm’s head of U.S. equities. While at DCM, Mark was part of the firm’s ESG team, responsible for evaluating and tracking the sustainability factors impacting portfolio companies, and assessing the suitability of companies for portfolio inclusion. Mark also spent several years in the sell-side research industry, covering the technology and services sectors. Mark holds an MBA from Columbia University in New York, a BBA from the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto, and is a CFA charterholder.