BBVA Chairman Carlos Torres Vila stressed today that the energy transition poses a great opportunity because many existing activities will see enormous growth as new activities will emerge. “Spain has a competitive advantage in the energy transition,” he said. “We have the natural resource – the new oil, which is the sun and the wind,” he added during his presentation on the second day of Wake up Spain, the energy transition symposium organized by El Español, Invertia and D+I.

BBVA has fulfilled its commitment to offer a sustainable alternative for its products in Spain – both for individuals and companies. The wide range of sustainable solutions is designed to respond to society’s growing demand and to help customers make the best financial decisions that also help the environment.

BBVA and Enel have signed a €1.35 billion sustainable linked guarantee facility. This guarantee facility, the largest of its kind signed by Enel Group, is an essential and necessary financial tool for the company’s entire operations: production, transport and distribution of electricity and gas, and public lighting services.

Global Finance has named Garanti BBVA the Best Investment Bank in Turkey for the fourth time in the last five years.

ESG criteria refer to environmental, social and corporate governance factors that are taken into account when investing in a company. Although their origin dates back several decades, they have become a reference for socially responsible investing in recent years.

Garanti BBVA reaffirms its commitment against climate change and announces that it will stop financing coal-related activities.

Citizens, companies, city councils and institutions from all over the world will turn off the lights this Saturday, March 27 for Earth Hour to fight against climate change and the loss of biodiversity. Since 2007, BBVA has participated in this initiative organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature, shutting down corporate headquarters and buildings distributed throughout all the geographies where the bank is present.

BBVA became carbon neutral in direct CO2 emissions in 2020. The Group managed to meet this goal by offsetting its entire carbon footprint through carbon mitigation projects, which also benefited the local communities where they are developed. The bank offset 120,562 tons of CO2e during the year through seven projects developed in different countries across its footprint. This achievement represents another step towards in its push to align its activity with the Paris Agreement and reduce direct and indirect emissions.

BBVA has invested €91.4 million in financial education programs that have benefited 29.2 million people (almost the equivalent of the population of Peru) since 2008, the year in which it launched its Global Financial Education Plan. On the occasion of the European Money Week and Global Money Week celebrations, BBVA also announced that in 2020 it devoted a total of €2.7 million to fund these initiatives that contribute to promoting financial health among communities.

BBVA reinforces its leading position in the European sustainable bond issuance. On this occasion, the bank has acted as sole green structurer and bookrunner for the successful issuance of the green bonds of Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission plc (SHET), an electricity transmission company and subsidiary of SSE plc. With this dual tranche transaction, the company consolidates its position as the UK’s most active utility in ESG bond financing.

BBVA increased its investment in social programs and initiatives by 25 percent, from €113.8 million in 2019 to €142.2 million in 2020, directly benefiting 12.2 million people. Additionally, the institution has promoted access to various training platforms to more than 15.6 million people. In 2020, BBVA’s social initiatives reached a total of 27.8 million people in countries where the Group is present.

Placing the core values of its corporate culture at the heart of its banking activities, Garanti BBVA issued its Integrated Annual Report 2020 with the concept “The Meaning We Attach to Words”. Integrating the real life reflections of its commitments to the society alongside economic indicators in its legal annual reporting, Garanti BBVA also describes the sustainability principles it has implemented in the process.

BBVA will reduce to zero its exposure to coal-related activities, stopping the financing of companies in this business by 2030 in developed countries, and by 2040 in the rest of the countries of its footprint. This decision, which is included in the updated BBVA’s Environmental and Social Framework, is in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) proposal. This aims to limit the rise in temperatures to a maximum of 1.5ºC and achieve the ambition of a carbon neutral economy in 2050.

BBVA was recently named Best Investment Bank for Sustainable Financing by Global Finance as part of its 22nd annual World’s Best Investment Banks survey.

In naming the global winners, Publisher and Editorial Director Joseph D. Giarraputo pointed out the role investment banks will play in the world post-pandemic, specifically mentioning the importance of understanding the skills and specialties that these banks bring. For BBVA USA, sustainability is a clear differentiating factor and has become especially important over the past year.

Global Finance recognized BBVA as the world’s best investment bank for sustainable finance at the latest edition of its awards ‘Best Investment Bank Awards 2021’. A global recognition that joins the bank’s other awards for the best equity bank in Western Europe and the best investment bank in Argentina, Spain and Turkey.

The BBVA Foundation has awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category to Paul Alivisatos and Michael Grätzel for their fundamental contributions to the development of new nanomaterials that are already being applied both in solar energy production and in next-generation electronics. The work of both winners opens the door to new avenues for the production of renewable energies, electronic devices, biomedical imaging techniques, and other applications.

BBVA has updated its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy with several new additions following the recommendations of Spain’s financial market regulator, the CNMV, and the bank’s growing commitment to its role in sustainable banking.  Furthermore, BBVA’s Board of Directors also approved the General Policy on Sustainability, which defines and establishes the general principles, main objectives and guidelines for the management and control of the Group in terms of sustainable development, with the aim of striking a balance among economic development, social development and environmental protection.

BBVA reached €50.2 billion in sustainable financing at the end of December 2020. This means it has achieved half of its sustainable financing objective foreseen for the 2018-2025 period (€100 billion), one year ahead of schedule. The growth rate in the financing of this type of BBVA sustainable operation is 33 percent more than planned.

BBVA received the banking industry’s silver award in the yearbook put together by S&P Global, analyst for the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), the ranking in which the Group rose to the position of the second most sustainable bank in the world in 2020.

Garanti BBVA is launching a product to finance the installation of solar energy systems on rooftops for self-consumption.

The BBVA Foundation has recognized the work of Sandra Díaz, Sandra Lavorel, and Mark Westoby with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Ecology and Conservation Biology category has gone in this thirteenth edition to ecologists. The three researchers linked plant ecosystem function to their physical characteristics, and described how these broad traits relate together at global level.

How do you know if a banking product is sustainable and contributes to the protection of the environment? In 2020, 26 banks including BBVA, tested how the European Union’s taxonomy on sustainable activities could be applied to core banking products. Common criteria for determining which products are sustainable could allow banks to drive sustainable financing for the entire economy.

BBVA was included in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index for the fourth consecutive year. The financial institution, which has placed diversity as a business objective, improved its rating by five percentage points compared to previous editions thanks to its policies of promoting equal opportunities in professional growth and an inclusive corporate culture, according to the international agency. Garanti BBVA, the Group´s Turkish subsidiary, is also included in the index.

BBVA commits to reporting ESG metrics, as part of the Measuring Stakeholder Capitalism initiative, adopted by 61 member companies of the Davos World Economic Forum and a group of top executives who are part of its International Business Council (IBC).

BBVA, which recently launched its line of business ‘Quantitative Investment Strategies’ (QIS) for institutional investors, has augmented its first QIS index family specialized in sustainability, with the incorporation of two pioneering climate indexes of its own creation: ‘Solactive BBVA Climate Action PAB Europe’ and  ‘Solactive BBVA Climate Action CTB Europe’.

Under the agreement with EBRD, Garanti BBVA will prioritize its investments with high sustainability performance for those who want to improve their performance while financing the investment projects.

BBVA, as sole sustainability coordinator, advised Publiacqua, one of the major water management companies in Italy, on how to link its core bank financing to environmental targets. The transaction consisted of converting an existing loan of EUR 140Mn into a sustainability-linked loan with two pure water management KPIs. With this financing, Publiacqua becomes the first water utility company in Italy to have sustainability features in their financing instruments.

The pandemic and the subsequent health protection measures have forced the bank to adapt the actions planned for its employees this Christmas. The traditional Christmas festivities have been replaced by global digital celebrations and a donation to three NGOs that provide support to the sectors of society that have suffered the most during the crisis.