SUSTAINABILITY
ARE BANKS AND FIs OVER-RELIANT ON CARBON OFFSETTIN
As industry strives to decarbonise , carbon offsetting has become a popular practice . But do the marketing claims stack up , and is carbon offset overused ?
WRITTEN BY : ALEX CLERE
In the past decade , at the same time as the emergence of fintech , climate awareness has pushed to the front of the consumer agenda . According to Mambu ’ s Green Banking Report , 60 % of consumers say they want every financial service they use to be sustainable . With the proliferation of APIs and integrations , and the move from bricksand-mortar banking to digital banking , it ’ s tempting to think that finance today has a relatively light footprint – but the emissions associated with banking and finance go deeper , as Mambu ’ s Director of Sustainability Anna Krotova explains .
Krotova says : “ The main cause of emissions in the financial services industry is not their day-to-day physical activities , but emissions related to the capital – loans , investments , underwritings – that the financial industry provides , or ' financed emissions '. The Carbon Disclosure Project ( CDP ) estimates that these financed emissions are on average 700 times greater than Scope-1 and 2 emissions generated from financial institutions ' activities such as heating , cooling and powering office buildings .
84 February 2023