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Case study

HSBC’s objective to source 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030

In November 2017, HSBC, one of the largest banking and financial services organizations in the world, committed to 100% renewable electricity across its global operations by 2030. They also committed to an interim goal of 90% by 2025.
Key points
  • The renewable markets in the regions HSBC have concentrated on have different levels of maturity. This brings both challenges and opportunities. When evaluating different approaches, HSBC quickly learned that structures or methodologies that worked well in one country cannot always be applied to another. This fundamentally required a collaborative approach across Real Estate, Legal, Procurement, Sustainability and specialist teams within Global Banking and Commercial Banking.
  • Strong ‘additionality’ or sustainability selection criteria makes both internal decision making straightforward, but also send a clear signal to developers on what types of projects HSBC is likely to contract with.
  • HSBC understands that it will be a huge challenge to meet the 100% renewable target, especially in markets where PPAs or similar mechanisms are not yet available. This challenge is one that is faced by HSBC clients
    as well. HSBC uses its experience to drive the renewable energy market in regions where it is yet to develop, so that its clients may also decarbonize their electricity supply. Again, a collaborative approach is required. Working with other corporates and partners as well as understanding regulatory concerns and policy drivers enables a clearer pipeline of projects to be developed in certain markets.