Rabobank has become the latest major Dutch bank to join the Dutch Green Building Council (DGBC) and commit itself to financing sustainable commercial properties.
The cooperative bank follows Dutch peers ING Real Estate Finance and ABN Amro which earlier signed up with the DGBC.
Amsterdam-based ING Real Estate Finance launched a five-step plan in 2016 aimed at incentivising its clients to ‘green’ their properties. In March this year, the bank sent a letter to its Dutch clients requiring them to submit a sustainability plan for their office buildings and industrial assets in the course of this year. If they fail to do so, ING REF will not extend existing loans from 2018.
Dutch legislation requires all office buildings to have a minimum C energy label by 2023 and one-third of ING REF’s portfolio now meets that norm.
ABN Amro also indicated recently that commercial clients can get 100% financing if they invest in ‘greening’ their buildings.
Rabobank is keen to make the built environment in general more environmentally sustainable and says it will give preferential treatment to companies which support this goal. To this end, it financially supported the conversion of more than 1 million m2 of vacant buildings in the Netherlands to new uses last year.
Annemarie van Doorn, director of DGBC, said financiers were an ‘essential link’ in greening the built environment. ‘It shows that the momentum [in efforts to achieve that goal] is really gaining pace,’ she noted. Other Dutch banks which have signed up with DGBC include ASN Bank, Triodos and NIBC Bank.
According to the European climate Foundation, Europe’s buildings emit 36% of CO2 emissions in Europe, compared with nearly 40% in the US, and energy consumption by this sector has been increasing in recent decades. While the efficiency of new buildings has improved over time, most of Europe’s existing building stock – over 90% of the total – has yet to be affected by energy performance requirements.
