Two new corporate climate-related bonds were issued this week.
The first, by Hong Kong-listed polysilicon producer Gold Poly, was a $50m convertible bond to finance the solar business of its project acquisition subsidiary China Solar Power Group. The bond is a 3 year bond with a 5% coupon.
Meanwhile, UK renewable energy utility Good Energy is following in the footsteps of its competitor Ecotricity by raising finance through a £5m retail bond offering to invest in solar and wind generation. The 4 year bonds will be offered in £500 tranches at an annual coupon of 7.25% with payments maid semi-annually; offer closes on Nov 2013.
Over to the US where the Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy Program (PACE) continues to move at... pace (while the residential one continues to face legal hurdles) with the completion of LA County’s $236,350 retrofit of a Teamsters Union building (including a 35.5kW solar installation) and a number of other examples in San Francisco, Ann Arbor MI and elsewhere (thanks to PACENow for doing all that reporting). It seems 2013 has been a turning point for commercial PACE with legislation enabled in 31 states and 400 municipalities, 25 programs accepting applications and new legislative efforts underway.
Finally, an example of opportunity (missed).
Philippines company FirstGen Corp owns nearly 20% of the country’s installed energy generation capacity, with about half its assets in clean energy — hydro and geothermal — and half in natural gas. Late last week it issued a 10 year, $250m, 6.5% corporate bond to “finance new power projects” as well as for general corporate purposes. All that gas means it’s not a green or climate bond, obviously; but if FirstGen had issued a “use-of-proceeds” bonds with funds earmarked and verified as such for its clean energy assets only – just like the EIB’s Climate Awareness Bonds - it would have been.
The bond was apparently successfully placed anyway, so moot point for them; but perhaps they would have been able to ferret out some new investors if they had, and even perhaps have had stronger investor demand. An opportunity for them to consider next time – and for all energy utilities to consider.
BTW, joint lead managers were Deutsche Bank, HSBC and JPMorgan. BDO Capital & Investment Corp and Development Bank of the Philippines were domestic lead managers.
