Sustainability, ESG and project finance experts join the Silta Impact Working Group
At present, the Silta team is busy digging into the Impact part of the Silta Scoring framework. In this blog, we introduce the members of the Silta Impact Working Group, and we invite others to apply!
Silta’s goal is to drive sustainable change in this world by directing finance towards sustainability impact projects. We aim to make sustainability impact investing more transparent to investors by recording successes and failures on the blockchain via an NFT. Furthermore, we aim to reward borrowers for delivering on their identified future impacts with token incentives.
Our focus is on the positive social and environmental outcomes that will be realised once the project enters its operations stage. This means that during the financing stage, we assess a project’s future potential for delivering sustainability outcomes, and then track the borrowers’ progress against delivering the intended outcomes during the operations stage.
A central part of our ongoing work is building the Silta Scoring framework, which comprises two parts: Impact and Project Viability. At present, the team is busy digging into the Impact part of the framework, and to support this work, we’ve gathered a group of external experts into an Impact Working Group.
Definition of Impact in Silta
Impact in Silta is a positive change in society or the environment that directly results from a funded real world asset’s operation. Impacts are broad, for example an impact of a solar farm could be a reduction of the reliance on energy generated by fossil fuels. Impact can be measured through the evaluation of outcomes.
An outcome tells us the level of change in an aspect of social, environmental or economic well-being that results from the implementation of a funded real world asset. An outcome is more specific than an impact, and is measurable. An example for an outcome of a solar farm could be a 20% increase in households in Valencia with access to clean energy.
Introducing the Silta Impact Working Group
The purpose of the Silta Impact Working Group is to provide input into the development of the Silta Scoring framework for Impact. A group of experts in sustainability, ESG and project finance will help the Silta team take the framework forward and build the details behind it.
Working group members will be meeting fortnightly to provide input into various documentation related to the impact scoring, such as the Silta Scoring reference guide, which acts as the “how to” manual for undertaking due diligence on projects, as well as the borrower questionnaires related to assessing impact. Silta Head of Transactions Rob Holmes acts as the Chair of the Working Group.
We’re excited to welcome the following Working Group members!
Anna Jakobsen
Anna is the EMEA Leader for Sustainability, Resilience and ESG at engineering services firm GHD. She works with governments and businesses to accelerate the transition to a sustainable and climate resilient future and serves on several advisory boards, supporting senior leadership in driving ESG performance. Anna has a Master of Laws (LL.M), a further Master’s degree in International Human Rights Law and over 17 years’ experience working within Sustainability, ESG and strategy consulting.
Before joining GHD, she was an Executive member at UK-based membership organisation Business in the Community, where she led a team of 30 and was responsible for strategy, data analytics, impact, and sustainability advisory services. Prior to BITC, Anna worked within EY’s sustainability advisory practice for 12 years where she led large, multi-stakeholder projects covering all aspects of ESG and spanning most geographies and sectors including FS. Her earlier career was spent as an ESG Analyst.
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“The need for substantial investment in infrastructure is well known with estimates claiming US$3.3 trillion must be spent annually through 2030 just to support expected global rates of growth. As an ESG professional who cares passionately about equitable and sustainable growth, the work I’m supporting at Silta has a tremendous opportunity of directing finance to sustainable infrastructure projects and incentivising long-term impact.” — Anna Jakobsen
Özlem Kildir
Ms. Özlem Kildir is a prominent Turkish project financier who has completed over $20bn of financing in Turkish and international markets, providing services for governmental bodies, corporates and multilaterals, including but not limited to project finance, corporate finance, public-private-partnership models, green finance, and infrastructure financing. Her experience related to project financing and green finance includes structuring and arranging deals, analysing creditworthiness of the projects, performing feasibility and sensitivity analysis of projects and project risk determination.
Özlem has holistic experience of determination of creditworthiness process and infrastructure finance, including preparing financial models, credit analyses and risk reports. She has also provided advisory services regarding feasibility studies, model development, fund sourcing, international project financing, and infrastructure project development for public bodies, privates and multilaterals. With her extensive knowledge about infrastructure projects, she has been a part of the largest project finance deals in Turkey and EMEA.
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“It is important for us to be at the intersection of innovative financial products and sustainable projects, because these two issues constitute the future of finance. We want to take part in the future of finance as we are in the present, and Silta provides a favourable habitat for this.” — Özlem Kildir
David Crosbie
For over 20 years David has operated in more than 40 countries advising multilateral development banks (World Bank, IFC, EIB, EBRD, ADB), the United Nations, as well as national governments and civil society organisations to deliver on social and environmental safeguards poverty reduction and climate mitigation — often in the context of fragile or small island developing states or in countries with rapid urbanisation. He is currently Team Leader for the ADB to deliver a $600m climate resilient affordable housing project in Mongolia. He’s the Founder of Penumbra and is involved in devising social and environmental frameworks for a bilateral agency whilst also supporting the United Nations as a Senior Advisor. He holds two Master degrees in Sociology and Urban Planning from University College London.
LinkedIn
“My particular interest in the Silta Score stems from my passion for delivering people-centred infrastructure in developing countries and my involvement in revising their safeguard policies whilst employed at the World Bank and EBRD. Silta offers an opportunity to apply innovative methods to expedite finance to respond to the global climate change needs.” — David Crosbie
Jędrzej Majewski
Jędrzej Majewski is a research fellow at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, focusing on natural hazards such as tsunamis and sea-level changes. He completed his MSc in environmental archaeology in the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland and a PhD on Sea-level at Nanyang Technological University. His research focus is the wider context of human-environment interactions both in older historical settings and present day in the context of climate change. He has run and taken part in multiple research projects in countries within the EU and in Asia, for example, in the Maldives, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. At Silta, he hopes to play a more active role in addressing the climate change problem.
LinkedIn
“We’ve known about climate change for decades, over the last 30 years IPCC reports and climate science in general have made the problems abundantly clear. Our most pressing priority now is the reduction of CO2 emissions, yet we still see very little urgency to act and CO2 emissions are still growing. So it is very exciting to be working with Silta on real-world solutions to leverage blockchain in the service of building infrastructure that will help to reduce the CO2 footprint of energy generation.” — Jędrzej Majewski
Call for applications to join the Silta Impact Working Group
We are inviting other experts to get in touch to join the Silta Impact Working Group. To qualify, individuals should have the following profile:
- Engineering, finance, legal or scientific background related to climate change, solar and other renewable energies, green finance, and/or sustainable finance
- Several years experience of working in sustainable projects that make positive societal and environmental contributions, ESG, and/or project finance
- People who also have a past involvement in project finance for solar projects would also be encouraged to get in touch, since this will be the first project type undergoing Silta Scoring.
If this sounds like you, please send an email to rob@silta.finance with the title “Impact Working Group” and tell us about yourself. Please attach your CV or LinkedIn profile.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not intended as any kind of investment advice. Read our full legal disclaimer here. For further information, email us at contact@silta.finance.
