Dutch bank to pump £8.5m into clean-tech

Regular readers might recall that he asked you what your favourite oxymoron is. Greenbang rattled through a couple, finally deciding on ‘military intelligence’. However, foolish Greenbang missed another glaringly obvious one: ethical bank.

Hilarious, isn’t it? Banks, loan sharks dressed up in fancy suits, have long had the reputation of lending money – aka your savings – to dodgy types and then looking the other way when they use it to finance things that just aren’t cricket. Yet, there are now choices for the humble investor who wants to make money without a guilty conscience.

For example, Dutch bank Triodos has taken the wraps off its Renewable Energy Fund. Five and a half million shares in the fund will be be put up for grabs to the average Joe investors, with a view to raising £8.5 million – cash which it says will be invested in renewable energy projects and companies.

Triodos has apparently been a long time do-gooder, financing over 200 renewable energy projects in Europe since 1983. Its assets can now pump out 23.45MW of green energy.

James Vaccaro, MD of Triodos Renewables hasn’t gone into details about how exactly the money will be spent, but he has said this:

“This new share issue means we can continue to build our asset base and invest in a variety of exciting sustainable energy projects. These include acquiring existing and planned sites, working with industry to provide a sustainable energy supply from brown field sites and developing partnerships to build new projects.”

If you’ve got a hankering to know more about Triodos portfolio, Greenbang can reveal it includes such gems as Marine Current Turbines and Connective Energy, which is developing ways to capture and re-use waste heat from industry.