07 February, 2022
ASN Bank joins Built by Nature as investment frontrunner
ASN Bank joins Built by Nature as investment frontrunner
Built by Nature welcomes ASN Bank as its latest industry frontrunner. Operating for over 60 years, the Dutch financial institution fosters environmental and social sustainability by using its customers’ funds to ‘promote sustainable development’. Its primary areas of investment include sustainable energy, building and circular business and companies and countries that respect human rights and the environment.
In February 2021, the bank joined the movement for biobased construction by becoming the first local bank to explore financing for houses made of alternative materials in order to reduce CO2 emissions and address the shortage of affordable housing in the Netherlands.
Of its involvement with Built by Nature, ASN Bank Senior Advisor Jeroen Loots, says “ASN and Built by Nature have a common goal: we want to make housing more sustainable and we believe that wood offers a solution.
We see that more and more entrepreneurs in the construction sector are building with wood and other natural, re-growth materials. To make this transition and make building with wood the norm, we need to form new chains and scale up wood production. We look forward to meeting other partners within the Built by Nature network and creating solutions for growth together.”
Built by Nature’s Head of Networks Jeff Blaylock adds, “It is critical to have financial institutions involved as frontrunners as they are key early-stage decisionmakers that can define how our buildings are being constructed. Metrics, such Construction Stored Carbon, are leading tools that can help create transparency around the carbon impact at an investment level.
These are the types of solutions that will change how our cities are built over the next 5-10 years. We welcome ASN Bank as a frontrunner member of the Built by Nature Network and look forward to helping them collaborate with other frontrunners withing our network from across Europe.”
ASN was one of 12 Dutch financial institutions to set up an industry-led partnership to facilitate transparency and accountability of the financial industry to the Paris Agreement. In 2015, those financial institutions created the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF), under the leadership of ASN Bank.
The initiative was launched via a Dutch Carbon Pledge calling on the negotiators at the Paris Climate Summit in 2015 to take ambitious steps while the committed financial institutions take their share in delivering an essential shift to a low carbon economy, starting with measuring and disclosing the GHG emissions of their loans and investments.