Decarbonisation in industries

The energy system contains more than generation and infrastructure. We also have to reduce our energy consumption to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, from waste recycling to excess heat, from individuals to businesses, from better insulation from more sustainable materials to reducing waste through circularity. Rabobank wants to support their clients with decarbonising their industries for example by accelerating fossil-free equipment and production, with lease and other financial solutions.

While the Energy Transition is challenging for many of our clients, it also provides them with big opportunities. Rabobank is both highly motivated and very capable of supporting growth across the energy transition related sectors to help companies build sustainable and future-proof business models.

Our services

To encourage our customers to make the transition, we have put pricing incentives in place in the form of lower interest rates for customers with certain eco-labels (Impact Loan), sustainability KPIs (Sustainability-linked loans) or with concrete sustainability investments (Green Loan). For the Dutch dairy sector, we have taken this a step further by introducing a pricing incentive applicable to all financing products for (sustainable) frontrunners in the Dutch dairy sector (for customers with more than EUR 1 million in financing).

We will expand this incentive to lower interest rates for frontrunners and higher rates for “laggards” for a broader group of customers starting with other Food & Agribusiness (F&A) sectors before the end of 2022 and for Industry, Transport and Commercial Real Estate sectors in 2023. Next to the aforementioned pricing incentives, we will continue to engage in an active dialogue with our customers to support them in staying, or getting, their businesses aligned with 1.5oC pathways.

Over the next two years, we will hold individual sustainability dialogues with all our Dutch corporate customers with more than EUR 1 million in financing. From 2023, we will require all corporate customers (financing >EUR 1 million) that are required by law to report on their sustainability performance and that submit a new financing request, to start periodically submitting those reports to the bank. We will use those reports to discuss their progress on sustainability.

By 2024, we will have an individual Sustainability Account Plan for all our Wholesale customers.

And from 2027 (or earlier if required by law), we will only finance customers in high-emitting sectors, as defined by the NZBA, if they have science-based carbon emissions reductions targets in place for 2030 and beyond which are aligned with a pathway to net-zero

Decarbonization Opportunities

    Focus on transformation, project development, and more ambitious funds for upgrading current assets. Put sustainability on company level in place by adding more criteria. Invest in innovative climate technology ideas to support the long-term efficiency aim of transitioning the sector in line with the global climate objective.
More about the Road to Paris alignment