GREEN LOANS IN ITALY: THE TEST WILL START DURING JUNE

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The EeMAP project is born: homes more efficient thanks to Green Loans

The built environment branch is responsible for more than one-third of the global energy consumption and of almost the 33% of Co2 emissions  (source International Energy Agency – OCSE).

UE will have to invest 100 billion € per year in renovation to achieve its environmental goal, that is to reduce by 2030 gas emissions of at least 40% compared to 1990 levels.

The European Commission knows how big will be not only the available public capitals, but also the intervention of private institution,
especially of all the banks that dispense loans to citizens.

Thanks to EeMAP new and innovative proposals have been presented for a new loan strategy in support of energetic efficiency. This will be tested in all Europe by pioneer banks and expert stakeholder in the construction sector.

World GBC is one of the key partners in the EeMAP project, which craves to settle the 100 billion € deficit to achieve the European environmental goals by raising energy-efficient buildings.

Replying to the banks’ request, the proposals define a European standard approach to green loans, to help the financial sector to settle in and to grow these products.

Green loans are meant to offer to consumers better lending rate or bigger grant when investing in houses highly efficient or when upgrading theirs.

Many reports that describe the energy context and the European market have been published by Green Building Council along with the proposals about how banks and private institutions will be helped if they choose to take part in this project.

GBC Italia is involved as the major national stakeholder and contributes, flanked by Unicredit and RICS, to drag more to support EeMAP initiative in Italy.

The energetic upgrade of our buildings represents a unique occasion to revamp the construction sector that,
in recent years, has been committed to this kind of renovation.

The final proposals for the loans pilot-project will be published during a conference in Windsor (UK) the 14 of June. This event will gather more than 100 high level financial and building experts, marking the start of the program.


Energetic efficiency: the Real Estate experts’ thoughts

A credit union, when it has to evaluate if allowing a loan to buy a property, takes count of the client possibility of repaying his purchase and of the consultant’s thought about the property quality and market value.

The consultant role is to give a reliable evaluation of market value based on consolidated data and on a suitable evaluation method.

Today it is not requested that consultants consider the energetic performance of the property. However, as shown by a survey among consultants and credit risk assessment departments, it is clear that there is a growing request of information about energetic efficiency.

Energetic efficiency and value

More than a half of the surveyed banks ask consultants to take count of the energetic class potentiality (generally by energetic certificates), with important exceptions that go even further and ask to consider the property environmental impact, too.

Consultants should consider aspects linked with energetic efficiency by inspecting properties since 9 banks out of 10 request information about the whole property condition.

These first results encourage EeMAP work to define the checklist and guidelines to include energetic efficiency aspects in a more structured way.

Data availability

It is a big challenge for the experts who have to make an assessment: regardless of the fact that market proofs exist or not, it is their responsibility to count all those quality aspects that could have an impact on the value.

For this reason, to improve the available data is a problem that has to be solved soon to strengthen the bond between building efficiency and risk reduction.

For the future

The experts’ ability in giving consultancy about the impact of energy efficiency is a key-point for credit unions to calculate loans accessibility without increasing risks and to allow more capital to consumers.

The Green Tag can lead to loans related to energy efficiency

A better comprehension of the relation between energy efficiency and value is important to make clearer the risk rating of property in banks’ portfolio.

The past December 12, concluding a new Climate Strategy and UN Environment Inquiry report about planning a sustainable financial system, a new strategy came to light: the Green Tag to allow banks to increase loans in favour of energetically efficient estates. This report was presented in Paris for One Planet Summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Europe, to achieve its climate and energy goals, has to take advantage of the loan creditors power to employ private capitals for the buildings’ energetic upgrades.
The market proposals and reports are the keys to make the loans green in Europe. This is a market that values more than 7 thousand billion euros.
We aks to UE sustainable building sector to work with us to pledge that these projects reach this goal.
(James Drinkwater, Director of WorldGBC’s Europe Regional Network)

The report describes how 10 European banks – ABN, AMRO, BBVA, Berlin Hyp, HSBC, ING, Lloyds, SEB, Suedtiroler Volksbank, Triodos and UniCredit – are about to identify, analyze and promote  green loans for the Residential and Real Estate Market by the direct assignment of environmental characteristics in these operations and of the debt capital market. (Climate Strategy & Partners official data)

The banks recognize that, if they have to help their clients and have to achieve their sustainability goals, they need to comprehend the energy performance of the property for which they have allowed a loan.

The Green brand is a systematic process in which the banks identify the environmental characteristics of their loans and the asset security as an instrument to increase the sustainable finance.

This brand will give an easier access to Green Bonds market, a better control of green loans performance and will give more detailed information about climatic risks of the asset.

In Italy, Green Loans requests are higher than ever before

European consumers have lived tough times to access to credit lines for upgrading their properties’ energy efficiency.

However, a new research published by E.ON, an important utility very active in many European countries, shows how the product proposed by EeMAP initiative, the green loan, could be the answer that we are looking for.

This research has been made during EeMAP initiative, that wants to define a new energy efficiency loan and counts among its partner both E.On and GBC Italia that is the head of both the national presentation and realization with Unicredit and RICS.

This new type of loan has been proposed, after a lengthy consultation, to different groups of consumers from Germany, Italy, Sweeden and United Kingdom.

Conclusions

The idea has been positively welcomed in Italy, Sweeden and United Kingdom but not in Germany, where there is already an energy efficiency program.

The most interested consumers were the Italians (80% of appreciation), followed by U.K. (66%). For this reason, both Italy and U.K have been recommended for being the most promising in view of the pilot test.

Consumers like the idea of an energy renovation, but at the same time they would like to have more options for personalization.

For consumers, the main strength of the product are its capability of a better financial management, a better energy management and a better management of their properties value.

Source © GBC Italia