Green Investment Bank and Harvard sign up to UN investment initiative

The UK Green Investment Bank (GIB) has become a signatory to the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) as part of its efforts to help fund the green economy.

GIB was officially launched by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Vince Cable (pictured right), in November 2012.

The Bank is headquartered in Edinburgh with an office in London and has £3.8 billion of funding from the government.

The projects it supports and wide ranging and have included onshore wind energy projects, a recovered wood gasification plant and a waste-to-energy scheme.

GIB recently announced a major £461m investment in offshore wind.

The PRI is a network of over 1,200 financial institutions that pledge to adhere to a set of six responsible investment principles that cover a range of areas including the integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues into investment analysis, as well as pledges relating to transparency, ownership and reporting.

The PRI was et up in 2005 and has signatories with $34 trillion (£20.3 trillion) in assets under management.

The chief executive of GIB, Shaun Kingsbury, said, “As the first institution of our kind globally, GIB has a responsibility to ensure that our investments meet the very highest standards of sustainability and responsibility. Most of the PRI obligations are already part of our investment policies, but we are keen to see what we can do to go beyond this, and share best practice with other responsible investors around the world.”

GIB becomes the second high-profile institution to become a signatory of the PRI, after Harvard University adopted the principles earlier this week.