Ratings: 28S&P Global Ratings Second Party Opinions, featuring Shades of Green
spglobal.com/spo S&P Global Ratings Second Party Opinions are an independent, point-in-time analysis of a sustainable finance instrument, program, or framework. Our SPOs, backed by the award-winning Shades of Green approach, provide additional transparency to investors that seek to understand and act upon potential contribution to a sustainable future. S&P Global acquired the Shades of Green business in 2022.
Note: Second Party Opinions are not credit ratings, do not consider credit quality, and do not factor into S&P Global Ratings’ credit ratings
Second Party Opinion options include:
| Use of Proceeds Financing (Green, Social, Sustainability) |
| Use-of-Proceeds SPOs assess types of sustainable financing where proceeds are allocated to specific environmental or social projects. S&P Global Ratings offers three types of Use-of-Proceeds SPOs: green, social, and sustainability. |
| Our integrated Use-of-Proceeds SPO analysis has these key components: |
| An alignment opinion S&P Global Ratings’ assessment of whether the financing’s documentation aligns with certain third-party published sustainable finance principles and guidelines (such as International Capital Market Association (ICMA), Loan Market Association (LMA), and European Union taxonomy) identified by the issuer. |
| Shades of Green For green projects, S&P Global Ratings’ qualitative opinion of how consistent environmental activities eligible for financing are with a low-carbon climate resilient future. |
| Issuer Sustainability Context We provide an opinion on the issuer’s sustainability context to situate the financing within the broader framing of the issuer’s key sustainability factors. |
| Sustainability-Linked Financing |
| Sustainability-Linked Financing SPOs assess types of sustainable financing where the proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes but for which the financial and/or structural characteristics of the instrument can vary depending on whether the issuer achieves predefined sustainability performance targets. These targets are measured through material key performance indicators. We assess alignment with ICMA’s Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles and/or LMA/LSTA/APLMA’s Sustainability-Linked Loan Principles. |
Understand the Transition Spectrum with Shades of Green
S&P Global Ratings SPOs, backed by the award-winning Shades of Green approach, provide additional transparency to investors that seek to understand and act upon potential contribution to a sustainable future. For green projects, S&P Global Ratings assesses the financing’s contribution in the transition to a low-carbon future through our shading scale, which includes assigning Dark, Medium, or Light shading, as appropriate.
Note: LCCR: Low-carbon climate resilient. LCCR is aligned with the Paris Agreement where the global average temperature increase is held below 2 degrees Celsius (2 C), with efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 C, above pre-industrial levels