Standard Chartered Pledges $4-to-5 Billion to Renewable Energy
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 09.27.07
As far as this year's Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting goes, this is the mother lode of commitments. Standard Chartered Bank has pledged $4-to-5 billion (yes, billion, folks) over five years to renewable-energy projects—wind, hydro, geothermal, solar, biomass, and so on—in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
At a press conference an hour ago, Peter Sands, the bank's group chief executive, made no bones about the fact that this wasn't a purely altruistic gesture (go, capitalism!) "We expect to make a lot of money from this," he said, adding that while this initiative was the smart thing to do for the company, it was also the "right thing" to do. (We'll have details as soon as they're made available.)
In 2006, the bank committed to establishing a $500 million microfinance facility, to educate 1 million people about HIV/AIDS, and to support the Vital Voices Global Partnership for women.
