Green funding ”not terribly complicated”
A record 775 million GBP from various green bonds help build a 25 km tunnel under London. Easy once you get started, says treasurer.
The Thames Tideway project is not a small one. A 25 kilometer long sewage tunnel, 7 meters wide, is being built through central London to take care of overflow sewage water which will otherwise pollute the Thames river. Construction costs have been estimated at some 4 billion GBP.
”Relatively easy for us”
“Issuing a green bond was relatively easy for us because we are a ‘pure play’ – everything we do is green,” says Ines Faden, treasurer of project company Thames Tideway, in an interview published by Treasury Management.
While the market largely perceives green bonds as causing headache, Ines Faden describes her serial process of multi-million debt issues as rather obstacle-free.
A cocktail of instruments
The issues, of six green bonds totalling 775 million GBP until now, have taken several forms: public bonds, private placements, nominal rate, CPI-linked, RPI-linked, cash bonds and deferred bonds. The total raised makes Thames Tideway the major green bond issuer of the UK.
”We did it all internally”
“It is possible to use consultants for this process, but we did it all internally. Once you get started, it isn’t terribly complicated. The changes required to the prospectus are also pretty simple, so this should not put treasurers off from issuing green bonds,” says Ines Faden.
”Likewise, the ongoing reporting is not a burden. Most companies actually collect and report this data in one way or another already anyway.”