Assisting the financial client and project owners in pre-lending and post-lending stages

Environmental and Social Due Diligence Services to a Solar Energy Project

Asia Climate Partners (ACP) was considering an investment in a major solar power player headquartered in Hong Kong. The investment will support the construction, ownership, and operation of existing and proposed solar projects by the target company in the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China).

In 2016, ACP commissioned our team to perform an environmental and social due diligence (ESDD) assessment of the target company at both corporate level and subproject level (27 sites out of 29 sites in total). The goal was to provide a gap analysis of the company’s current environmental and social (E&S) management practices against Chinese regulatory E&S requirements and the E&S safeguards of Asian Development Bank.

A team of six Stantec staff covering both environmental and social expertise completed this task on a very tight schedule. The scope of work of the ESDD was three-fold, entailing a corporate audit, an environmental and social compliance audit of subprojects, and a corrective action plan. The corporate audit included a review and gap analysis, the compliance audit reviewed existing and potential risks and areas for improvement where land acquisition has been completed, and the corrective action plan addressed key gaps and findings.