Die Messung von Treibhausgasemissionen im Bankgeschäft – das Konzept der finanzierten Emissionen

Abstract

The societal and political trend with regard to the controversial hold debate of economic sustainability does not ignore financial markets and its participants. Particularly climate change as systemic and dominant sustainability risk and result of man-made global greenhouse gas emissions strengthens the position, that financial institutions are jointly responsible for global warming and therefore must actively operate against it. Financial institutions directly and indirectly finance emissions by their finance and investment operations. On the other hand, the financial sector is necessary for allocating capital in line with the 2°C climate goals. Under these conditions, financial institutions need to have access to methods for quantifying their financed emissions that enables valid decisions on finance and investment. The following article illustrates the concept of financed emissions based on the corporate carbon footprint (CCF) and examines how financial institutions can quantify them to assess their exposure to climate risks and to develop a climate strategy to minimize risk exposure. The concept of financed emissions can be considered as a first approach for financial institutions to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies to proactively manage climate related risks and help society to allocate capital in line with the 2°C climate goals. Important guidance for the financial sector is set in place by the “Greenhouse Gas Protocol” and the “Technical Guidance for Calculating Scope 3 Emissions”, established by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the World Resource Institute. Besides the components to develop models to quantify financed emissions, methodological constraints and limitations exist. They are explicitly shown in this article. Another very important ingredient to assess financed emissions is climate related data. Actually, there is still a big lack of standardised and internationally accepted data that could be used to estimate financed emissions, although several providers serve individual measurement tools.