SK Hynix Issues First Green Bond in Memory Semiconductor Industry... Accelerating ESG Management

[Asia Economy Reporter Ki-min Lee] On the 14th, SK Hynix announced that it will issue a $1 billion Green Bond to accelerate its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) management by investing in eco-friendly businesses.

SK Hynix is the first global memory semiconductor company to issue a Green Bond. A Green Bond is a special-purpose bond that can only be used to raise funds for environmentally friendly investments. This Green Bond received orders totaling $5.4 billion from over 230 institutional investors worldwide, and SK Hynix significantly increased the issuance size from the initially planned $500 million to $1 billion.

SK Hynix plans to invest the funds raised through the Green Bond in eco-friendly projects such as water quality management, energy efficiency, pollution prevention, and ecological environment restoration. In particular, to address the critical importance of water management in the semiconductor industry, the company will undertake projects to build a new state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plant and establish a water reuse system.

Additionally, to reduce carbon emissions across the IT industry, SK Hynix plans to promote various projects, including the development of low-power SSDs (Solid State Drives, NAND-based storage devices). The company is making every effort to replace HDDs (Hard Disk Drives), one of the representative storage devices, with SSDs. This not only advances product technology but is also expected to significantly reduce carbon emissions from IT devices, thereby contributing greatly to creating social value in the environmental sector. In fact, replacing HDDs with low-power SSDs can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 93%.

Jang Hyuk-jun, Vice President of Finance at SK Hynix, stated, "The successful issuance of this global Green Bond reflects global investors' recognition of the company's proactive eco-friendly initiatives, including joining RE100." He added, "As a leading memory semiconductor company in ESG management, we will secure sustainable growth engines and contribute to enhancing not only economic value (EV) but also social value (SV)."

Meanwhile, global companies are actively engaging in ESG activities to proactively respond to climate change and other issues. Global IT companies such as Apple and TSMC have participated in RE100 (100% renewable energy) and issued ESG bonds. SK Hynix also joined RE100 at the end of last year, becoming the first domestic company to do so along with major SK affiliates.

In October last year, SK Hynix announced its Financial Story vision to strengthen its memory semiconductor business competitiveness with DRAM and NAND as twin pillars while actively creating SV through ESG activities. Starting this year, the company plans to fully implement this vision and enhance corporate value by securing the trust of stakeholders.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.