Carbon footprint: The emission of greenhouse gases by an activity or organization, usually over a given period of time, measured in carbon equivalent.
Carbon neutral: Achieving net zero carbon emissions by balancing carbon emitted with an equivalent amount sequestered or offset, or buying enough carbon credits to make up the difference.
Circular economy: Creating a circular economy for a product attempts to design out waste and pollution from that product, keep it in use for as long as possible including through reuse, repair or sharing, and recover and regenerate materials after their functional lifespan.
CSR: Corporate social responsibility encopmasses a company’s efforts to be socially accountable to itself, stakeholders and the public through a range of self-regulating activities.
ESG: Environmental, social and corporate governance refers to the three central “pillars” in measuring the sustainability and societal impact of a company, usually one that is publicly traded. These criteria help to determine the future financial performance of companies. It is a term used largely by the investment community.
GLP: Green Loan Principles, a set of voluntary guidelines that help shape the terms of a loan between lender and borrower when the money is specifically allocated to a green project.
LCA: A life cycle assessment is a systematic analysis of the potential environmental impacts of a product or service during their useable life times and beyond.
Materiality: Materiality is the extent to which a sustainability factor has a significant positive or negative on a company’s growth, profits, operations and risk.
The Paris Agreement: An international agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed in 2016, with an aim to limit the rise in global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 C.
Reporting: Enables organizations to consider their economic, social and environmental impacts and be more transparent about risks and opportunities.
SLL: Sustainability-linked loan. Sustainability linked loans are any types of loan instruments and/or contingent facilities (such as bonding lines, guarantee lines or letters of credit) which incentivize the borrower’s achievement of ambitious, predetermined sustainability performance objectives.
SLLP: Sustainability-linked Loan Principles are voluntary recommended guidelines for lenders and other market participants that outline the parameters SLLs. They are applied on deal-by-deal basis depending on the transaction’s underlying characteristics.
SPT: Sustainability performance targets include key performance indicators, external ratings and/or equivalent metrics1 and which measure improvements in the borrower’s sustainability profile.
UN 17 SDGs: The set of 17 sustainable development goals set out by the United Nations. A cornerstone for global sustainability efforts.
