For many years now, Banco Sabadell has stood out for being one of the market leaders when it comes to energy efficiency and renewable energy. These efforts have been aimed in two distinct and clearly defined directions. Firstly, at an organisational level, with our commitment to the consumption of 100% renewable energy and the application of eco-efficiency measures in our facilities since 2015. Secondly, from the point of view of our activity, since the 1990s we have been fostering the first investment and financing solutions in renewable energies, helping our customers implement the necessary measures and installations to achieve energy efficiency within their organisations. Since then, and to this day, we have held on to our leadership position within the Project Finance market as far as these types of initiatives are concerned, and we continue moving forward, offering up our expertise on renewable energies, energy efficiency and sustainable transportation in the face of the challenges that companies and individuals encounter during the energy transition. Some examples of how we are accompanying our clients are the end-to-end solutions (service + financing) provided by prestigious partners to improve energy efficiency. They help respond to challenges such as the refurbishment of buildings and the installation of photovoltaic panels for self-consumption or sustainable financing linked to each sector through the selection of environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria related to their transformation needs.
We have been particularly active in this area over the past four years, and over the past year in particular. We have become the leading institution in the financing of merchant power generation plants (which is the name given to generation facilities that sell all the energy produced directly to the market). Over the last four years, we have financed over 140 projects, with an installed capacity of 8.5 GW. And in 2021 alone, we developed 41 plants, 27 of which were greenfield plants. In other words, they are located in areas where there was previously no construction of any kind, which minimises the environmental impact of their startup.
As well as giving us the aforementioned leading position in Spain in the financing of renewable energy generation projects, the market has also recognised our work in this field with various awards and distinctions. The most recent of these was awarded by Energy Box, one of the world’s leading publishing groups specialising in environmental issues. They recently presented us with the Spain Excellence Renewable Energy Investor award in recognition of our contributions to the process of decarbonising the planet by undergoing an energy transition process.
Furthermore, we turn to the expertise of our Sinia Renovables subsidiary, which has more than 25 years’ experience in wind, photovoltaic, solar thermal, mini-hydro, cogeneration and biogas projects.
99% of the electric energy we consume comes from renewable sources
While we focus our professional activity on collaborating with solutions in renewable energies, energy efficiency and sustainable mobility to build towards this transition process, our company has simultaneously undergone, over the last few years, a profound internal transformation process to adapt the solution of our energy needs to environmentally friendly options. As a result, we can now say that 99% of the electricity we consume comes from 100% renewable energy sources and that we are already neutral in our internal emissions thanks also to the installation of photovoltaic panels in corporate centres along with the offset actions we carry out with reforestation projects. At the same time, we have already started to certify some of the main corporate events that the company organises each year, with a view to guaranteeing sustainable events with a positive environmental and social impact.
All these actions – paired with the decarbonisation and energy transformation, including energy efficiency – are part of our ESG action framework, “Sabadell Sustainability Commitment”, which was publicly presented in March and whose actions and objectives can be found in greater detail on our corporate website.
