Before financing or investing in a large-scale project that could have significant impacts on its surrounding environment, financial institutions may decide to examine the project’s environmental and social risks.
In some cases, the examination is conducted based on international guidelines and requires actions that go beyond those called for by laws and regulations applied in Japan. Here, we give an example of this by presenting a wind power generation project being planned for a certain location in Japan.

It was decided that we would check the project’s suitability under the “Equator Principles,” which, when a private financing company will provide financing for a large-scale project, provide guidelines for verifying that the project will be executed with sufficient consideration for the effects it will have on the natural environment and local community.
The first step is to check existing documentation, such as environmental impact assessments prepared by the operator. However, occasionally there are differences between the requirements of Japanese environmental impact assessments and those of international guidelines, such as the Equator Principles.
Using a questionnaire format, we asked the operator to provide information for some of the items that were not evaluated in the operator’s environmental impact assessment.
We also conducted a field survey of the planned construction site.

Based on the information we collected, we checked whether the project plan satisfies the Equator Principles’ requirements. Then, for the items that did not satisfy those requirements or that still needed to be addressed, we provided monitoring points that the financial institution needed to keep an eye on going forward.
By preparing reports like this, we help operators raise the funds they need smoothly.