YES Bank, European Investment Bank to invest $400 mn in power projects

Last year the European Investment Bank had provided $19.6 billion for climate-related investment worldwide

YES Bank joined hands with leading institutional lender of the European Union (EU), the European Investment Bank (EIB), to invest $400 million in renewable energy projects. The fund, aimed at a period of 15 years, would look to support solar, wind, electric mobility and carbon mitigating infrastructure projects. The investment would be shared half among the two partners.
 
The 15-year $200 million EIB loan was approved by the EIB Board of Directors on 12th December and financial details of the new initiative are expected to be finalised in the coming weeks, said the public statement issued by the Yes Bank.

"The new financing programme will streamline funding for a range of renewable energy projects being built and operated by leading Indian corporations and private sector developers. Eligible solar power projects have already been identified in the states of Rajasthan, Telangana, Maharashtra and Karnataka and additional wind and solar projects are currently being examined," said the statement.
 
Speaking with Business Standard, Donal Cannon, the head of EIB Regional Representatives for South Asia said, “The project capacity should be more than $50 million for EIB to look personally into it. Yes Bank will select the project which would be supported through this fund. ”

 

Our growth last year in the carbon mitigating sectors was more a $41 billion and we expect to surpass it next year. India offers a host of opportunities including solar, wind to upcoming push toiletries vehicles and related infrastructure. For that matter, metro rail is also a climate friendly infrastructure as it helps take people away from automobiles.
 
All these sectors and more are the interest areas of EIB in India, “he said. The EIB is the world's largest international public bank, owned directly by the 28 European Union member states and is the largest lender for renewable energy investment worldwide. Last year the European Investment Bank provided $19.6 billion for climate-related investment worldwide.

 
Lately, the EIB has made new investment in expansion of the Bangalore and Lucknow Metro Rail systems. This is the first EIB cooperation with Yes Bank, and represents the first support for renewable energy in Asia with a commercial bank. This is also the longest tenor borrowing facility for Yes Bank in the international loan market, said the public statement.
 
"With this transaction we remain well on track to achieve our commitment to finance 5,000 MW of RE made at the 1^st RE-INVEST Summit in Feb 2015 and is also synchronous with our COP 21 commitment of mobilising $5 billion for Climate Finance by 2020." said Rana Kapoor, Managing Director & CEO, Yes Bank in the statement issued.