Australian data centers operator DCI secures a Green and Sustainability-linked loan

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Brookfield Asset Management has successfully closed its first Green and Sustainability-linked Loan to refinance the existing portfolio of DCI Data Centers (“DCI”), an Australian owner and operator of data centers with a current capacity of 8.6MW. The transaction highlights the company’s efforts towards more responsible operations and reinforces its position as one of the most sustainable actors in the sector. Natixis acted as joint sustainability coordinator for the transaction.

Innovative Sustainability Features

In November 2021, Brookfield Asset Management signed a Green and Sustainability-linked term loan to refinance its DCI Data Centers’ portfolio in Australia and New Zealand. The financing refers to DCI’s Sustainable Finance Framework, allowing the company to put in place sustainability-linked features as well a green use of proceed tranches, which enable them to apply the green structure for dedicated energy efficient projects’ financing, and the sustainability-linked structure for guiding their overall decarbonization trajectory and corporate-use sustainable financing. The Sustainable Finance Framework was reviewed by Sustainalytics, acting as the Second Party Opinion provider, which confirmed the alignment of it with the Green Loan Principles and the Sustainability Linked Loan Principles.

Sustainability challenges for data centers

By structuring such a transaction, DCI joins the restricted list of data centers which embedded their sustainability strategy into their financing operations. The combination of both the KPI-linked and the use of proceeds approach allows DCI to fully address the material challenges faced by the sector, namely to increase the energy efficiency of the assets (their ‘Power Usage Efficiency’) as well as increasing the consumption of electricity generated from renewable energy sources.

The structuring of a combined green and sustainability-linked feature for a data center player is a world 1st in the market, which illustrates Natixis’ expertise in supporting its clients with green and sustainable financing products as companies and countries globally strive to meet climate targets.

About DCI Data Centers

DCI Data Centers is a data centre owner and operator that is challenging the way facilities are built and operated. It brings together innovative, environmentally-efficient technologies and construction methods to enable the rapid deployment of secure cloud and hyperscale compute environments.

With a growing fleet of data centres across Australia, New Zealand and Asia, DCI Data Centers’ mission is to become the preferred partner in the Asia Pacific region for the delivery of purpose-built, highly secure, and resilient data centre solutions.