Project Finance For The Environmentally Friendly

The Equator Principles are a set of voluntary environmental and social guidelines for project finance that commit adopting Equator Banks, including the ANZ, Westpac, ING, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and the Royal Bank of Scotland, to reject finance applications for projects that fail to meet the guidelines.

While project financing decisions have traditionally centered on profitability, the Principles require project financiers to play a role in ensuring projects are developed in a socially responsible manner, that reflect sound environmental practices. The central concept of the Principles is that negative impacts on project-affected ecosystems and communities should be avoided, and where they are unavoidable, they should be reduced, mitigated and/or compensated.