Can you talk about you or your company’s efforts relating to renewability, sustainability or other environmentally- friendly activities?

Aquila Clean Energy is a clean energy platform that funds, develops, builds and operates solar PV, wind power and battery storage assets across the region. Aquila Clean Energy is part of Aquila Capital, a sustainable investment and asset development company focused on generating and managing essential assets on behalf of its clients. Today, Aquila manages more than €14bn on behalf of institutional investors worldwide.

By virtue of our work in supporting the energy transition at a time with such great focus on the clean energy industry, we are (fortunately) often painted with a broad brushstroke as being a ‘sustainable’ company. We do not take this for granted. In establishing our ESG policies in the region, we have been humble in our approach to developing the tools and processes used in our greenfield project developments (whether solar, wind or energy storage). As part of this, we have worked with various consultants to develop an E&S framework and management system for our investment teams to utilise when assessing various opportunities in the APAC region.

Why are in-house lawyers well-placed to drive change in their organisations?

In-house lawyers are very well placed to help our organisations drive change on key business initiatives with respect to sustainability and ESG factors. In many ways it’s no different than working through the other lenses we use to help assess and manage risk, whether from regulatory, compliance or reputational perspectives. We are, more broadly, guardians of our organisations’ values. As in-house lawyers work closely with business teams, we can help them navigate the complexity involved in bringing positive, sustainability-focused change to our organisations. We also serve as an effective bridge between different business teams (such as technical, investment, corporate, finance) and external advisors to ensure that we can leverage the specialist knowledge that each brings. In-house lawyers are adept at utilising the know-how of different disciplines to drive change in a manner that respects different stakeholders’ perspective with the underlying business goals in mind.

It can be difficult to truly measure a company’s track record and accomplishments in terms of their environmentally-friendly behaviour. What do you think has, until now, been mostly missed when discussing how green a company is?

As we do not have a common taxonomy or universally-shared mean to measure a company’s track record in environmentally-friendly behaviour, it can be a difficult thing to quantify. It’s not a one-size-fits-all model and there are various avenues we need to assess and explore before advising a business on how to navigate these matters. As lawyers, we are well-placed to chart our organisations’ respective journeys through the ‘alphabet soup’ of ESG factors, operating from an accountability lens to accurately measure the impact of our corporate behaviours. As the level of investment in sustainability agendas differs across industries and organisations, we unfortunately still see examples of companies touting accomplishments that skate towards ‘greenwashing’. In this respect, in-house lawyers have a responsibility to help further educate our corporate and business teams so we can more effectively steer our organisations on ESG agendas and their implementation to achieve real, meaningful change.