HSBC offers green loan to Gogoro Inc
HSBC Bank Taiwan Ltd (匯豐台灣商銀) has offered Gogoro Inc (睿能創意) a green loan to purchase energy-efficient products, marking the bank’s first green loan to an electric scooter manufacturer.
Although many people think green loans are exclusive to renewable energy developers, they actually have a broader application, and are extended to any business that can improve the environment, HSBC Taiwan commercial banking head Stanley Hsiao (蕭仲程) told the Taipei Times on Aug. 13.
“Whether a business can reduce carbon emissions or lower its fuel consumption are not the only criteria we use to determine whether to approve a green loan. We also take into account its deployment of energy-efficient technology as important and helpful to the environment,” Hsiao said.
The latter makes a case for Gogoro, which does not directly use green energy to power its battery-swapping stations, but utilizes many energy-efficient components for its electric scooters, including a core component battery, he said.
To avoid having the funds used for just any environmentally friendly expenditure, the bank has required Gogoro to use the funds only for battery purchases and to routinely track the fund flow to check “if the money is being spent in the right place,” he added.
Hsiao did not disclose the size of the loan extended to the electric scooter maker due to a confidentiality agreement, saying only that the figure would be in the middle level of all green loans or sustainability-linked loans HSBC Bank Taiwan has offered.
The bank has also provided green loans or regular corporate loans to local suppliers of electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc, but the loan to Gogoro is the first to an electric scooter maker, he said.
Hsiao said he holds a conservative outlook for the growth of green loans, because compared with sustainability-linked loans, green loans have stricter rules for banks and their corporate clients.
Sustainability-linked loans allow loan-takers to use the funds for general corporate purposes, not just green projects, he said.
Given the stricter criteria for green loans, banks need to carefully communicate to clients what kinds of projects they can spend the money on and to keep on following their progress, he said.
That partly explains why sustainability-linked loans have grown faster than green loans in Taiwan, he said.