Climate neutrality and sustainability

The transformation to a sustainable economy requires coordinated interaction between governments, companies, investors, civil society and citizens in order to tackle the challenges of climate change, social inequality and limited resources and create a future worth living for all.

In principle, private capital is available in NRW to finance the climate-neutral and digital transformation, a resilient energy supply and renewable energies. In view of the scale required, the central problem of transformation financing is ensuring that private capital is actually invested in NRW. To achieve this, investors and capital seekers in NRW must come together. The transformation of business models requires reliable framework conditions and appropriate, risk-appropriate profitability prospects for companies.

The banking industry has a key role to play in financing sustainability and digitalization at companies. In addition, the offerings for companies on the capital market must be strengthened. Insurance companies can secure sustainable business practices and are of great importance as institutional investors, particularly in infrastructure financing.

Public development banks can play an important supporting and anchoring role, as the majority of the necessary investments will nevertheless have to be financed without public aid. The aim is to invest in sustainable future technologies and make the energy supply more resilient. However, many companies must first strengthen their equity base before they ask for loans to finance new investments. This is because crises such as the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine have caused equity to dwindle in many cases.

In order to finance the digital transformation in NRW, not only must high investment volumes be financed, but the appropriate financing instruments must also be available for the respective business models. These include, for example, loans with liability exemptions, mezzanine capital, funds, private equity and venture capital.

The various challenges for individual company sizes and innovation stages are multifaceted. Financial products must be further developed in a targeted manner in order to find the right financing mix in each case. After all, a start-up with a new business idea needs a different type of financing than an established medium-sized company whose products are to become digital and climate-neutral.