On October 25, at the “Green Jingchu – Hubei Finance Expo Green Finance Forum” – the first stop of “2013 Beautiful China Tour • Green Finance” of Industrial Bank (IB) in Central China, IB Wuhan Branch entered into the strategic cooperation agreement with the Financial Office of Hubei Province, promising to extend new green finance based loans not less than RMB 30 billion to support the province to build the “Ecological Hubei” and “Resource-conserving and Environment-friendly Society” in the coming three years. Meanwhile, the Bank also signed the “Strategic Cooperation Agreement” with Huaneng Carbon Asset Operation Co., Ltd., and both parties will carry out in-depth cooperation centering on the areas including domestic carbon market trading, energy performance contracting (EPC) based financing, and asset securitization for energy conservation and emission reduction projects.
Besides the Financial Office of Hubei Province, persons-in-charge of the province's Development and Reform Commission and the Environmental Protection Department and the Environment Finance Department of IB Head Office also attended the forum.
The 18 th CPC National Congress put forward that ecological civilization should be placed at an outstanding position, and this provides a historic chance for the development of green finance. As the development of low-carbon, recycling and ecological economy also contains massive demands of financial service, this requires the participation of more financial institutions and the support of the entire financial system. As the first Equator Bank in China, IB has, in recent years, actively advocated the philosophy of sustainable development, kept giving prominence to the business features of green finance, and supported the development of green economy in China by making use of green finance tools effectively. It is reported that, across the region of Hubei, the Branch has accumulatively provided local energy conservation and environmental protection enterprises or projects with financing of RMB26 billion up to now. By the end of September, the financing balance hit RMB 13.277 billion, involving 471 energy conservation and environmental protection projects. Each year, the energy-conserving and emission-reducing projects supported with such financing could save 1.36 million tons of coal equivalent, reduce 3.86 million tons of CO 2 , and save 60,000 tons of chemical oxygen demand (COD).
It is also learnt by the reporter that, in the process of supporting the development of green finance, IB has carried out in-depth research into the financial demands in the three areas of green economy: low-carbon economy, recycling economy and ecological economy, and provided professional products and services through sustained innovation. On May 24, 2013, the branch, Hubei United Investment Group, and Ping An Insurance (market quotation special section) jointly released the “United Investment-Ping An Insurance Capital Debt Investment Plan”. The funds raised in the first phase, RMB 3 billion, has been put into use to support the construction of 4 inter-city rails in Wuhan City Circle. The remaining RMB 2 billion will be issued within a year. As an urban rail transit project in the area of low-carbon economy, its financing volume created the biggest scale of single investment in rail with insurance capital debt at home, lending a vigorous boost for Wuhan City Circle to develop the low-carbon economy of the “Resource-conserving and Environment-friendly Society”.
In the future, the person-in-charge of IB Wuhan Branch indicates, the branch will further actively push forward the energy conservation and emission reduction of Hubei Province and improve the development of energy conservation and environmental protection industry in the region vigorously with innovated finance forms including green credit, green investment and green insurance.