Sustainability Bond #12 of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia

The concept of the Sustainability Bonds is closely related to the Sustainability Strategy for North Rhine-Westphalia which was adopted in 2016 and updated in 2020. The content, goals and measures of the strategy are closely aligned with the goals of the German Federal Strategy for Sustainable Development (2018 update) and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Ecological, economic and social interaction are equally taken into account.

Ten years ago, the State's first Sustainability Bond was issued. Since then, the concept has been continuously improved and adapted to current market standards. The twelfth Sustainability Bond will be issued for the first time under a new framework. According to the new framework, the bond refers to projects from the previous year's State budget. This makes it possible to provide investors with detailed information on the allocation and the achieved impacts before issuance. The agency ISS Corporate assessed the framework, among other things, for compliance with the EU Taxonomy Regulation for its green activities.

53 suitable projects were selected based on the criteria set out in the framework. The projects originate from areas such as education, health, infrastructure, energy transition, and climate adaptation. 

The State's Sustainability Bonds have been extremely well received by investors and other experts. The information portal "GlobalCapital" honoured the State of North Rhine-Westphalia six times as the “Most Impressive Municipal/Local Authority Green/SRI Bond Issuer” (2017) / “Most Impressive Local Government Green/SRI Bond issuer" (2019, 2021, 2022) / “Most Impressive Local Government ESG Bond Issuer (2023, 2024)”. In addition, the State's Sustainability Bond was awarded with the prize for “Sustainability bond of the Year - supranational, sub-sovereign and agency (SSA)” (2019) / “sustainability bond of the year – local authority/municipality” (2024) twice by Environmental Finance.
 

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