Finance | Page 19

The NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business, partnering with Rockefeller Asset Management, announced on Feb. 10 that their research indicates that ESG activities lead to better financial performance.

A 7.6 MW solar project that will provide clean energy to three municipalities and one nonprofit organization in the Chicago area is now fully operational and is expected to save the four recipients over $14.5 million in energy costs over the next 25 years.

On Jan. 19 BloombergNEF (BNEF) announced a new broad measure of energy transition investment showing global record-breaking 2020 commitments to decarbonization totaling $501.3 billion. This beats the previous year by 9% despite the economic disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mercom Capital Group announced on Jan. 11 that total corporate funding into the solar sector globally, including venture capital, private equity (VC), debt financing and public market financing, came to $14.5 billion in 2020, a 24% increase compared to 2019.

BloombergNEF announced Jan. 11 that sustainable debt (sustainability bonds) grew 81% in 2020 to $68.7 billion, while the longest-established theme, green bonds, saw volumes rise 13% to a new record of $305.3 billion.

It's the weekend! Kick back and catch up with these must-read articles from around the web.

A new survey conducted in Canada found that 98% of issuers and investors are already factoring sustainable investing into their financial activities.

How do you quantify the value of a microgrid, which is essentially an insurance policy? You're ensuring that your facility doesn't go down or have an outage. How much is an outage really worth and how do you value that? In this age of Covid-19, the pressure to fulfill commitments still remains high. Investor pressure remains high. Project goals remain in place. But the financing is no longer available. What should customers be looking at and exploring in the interest of managing this dilemma? Listen to this episode of Smart Energy Voices to hear how Matthew Walters, Head of Distributed Energy Systems, Americas at SIEMENS tackles it from a holistic approach.