In June 2022, banking big NatWest launched Carbon Planner, a service designed to assist companies in lowering their carbon footprint. To study extra concerning the resolution, Finextra spoke with head of local weather change at NatWest, James Shut.
The aim of the Carbon Planner is to facilitate the inexperienced transition of companies in keeping with the financial institution’s carbon emissions and local weather affect. Working as a information for companies that may enter their fuel and electrical energy utilization to see their carbon footprint, this system signposts steps that may be taken to turn into extra sustainable. As sources required for companies in various sectors differ, NatWest goals to supply quite a lot of sources accordingly by way of the personalisation of their providers.
Explaining how the planner calculates emissions, Shut states: “These utilizing it are introduced with a collection of questions. The responses are enter right into a carbon footprinting mannequin which estimates the carbon footprint. The theoretical foundations of the modelling framework – based mostly on the rules offered by the Greenhouse Fuel protocol (GHG) – are properly based and understood. Nonetheless, carbon accounting processes are evolving and Carbon Planner will evolve with them.”
A survey performed by NatWest revealed that 58% of companies believed they required monetary help in lowering their carbon emissions, Shut said that the Carbon Planner is a transfer in direction of serving to firms on their local weather journey.
“Carbon Planner is on the market to all UK companies and is free. It presents potential options, together with financing (loans, asset finance, grants) that companies can discover when looking for to scale back their carbon footprint. Now we have put a big variety of our relationship managers by way of the College of Cambridge and College of Edinburgh’s sustainability coaching so that they know tips on how to signpost prospects to essentially the most up-to-date help.”
Moreover, NatWest’s Inexperienced Mortgage platform intends to fund firms with inexperienced ambitions.
Past offering options and providing merchandise for firms to chop down their carbon emissions, the planner additionally tracks their progress in direction of their sustainability objectives. Customers are offered the choice to mark actions as ‘in progress’ or ‘full’; subsequently the affect of the planner could be noticed.
“We all know that for rising companies, their footprint can go up even when they’re taking motion to scale back it, which is why we might be bringing in additional performance sooner or later to assist these prospects see the affect actions are having relative to their measurement, reminiscent of turnover or worker measurement.”
The pilot for this system ran in November 2021, with NatWest working with hundreds of companies to find out the design and options of the service. Although unable to reveal particular firms, Shut informs us that companies of various maturities from quite a lot of sectors have adopted the Carbon Planner for his or her inexperienced ambitions transferring ahead.
Shut provides that NatWest plans for the service to develop together with rising sustainable expertise: “The Carbon Planner continues to enhance as accounting strategies are standardised. NatWest Group has labored with trade specialists and carbon accounting consultants to develop the modelling framework. It has been independently reviewed by main lecturers and a 3rd get together local weather consultancy to make sure alignment with the GHG protocol.”
NatWest’s private inexperienced ambitions embrace halving their local weather affect by 2030, hitting web zero by 2050, and funding £100 billion to Local weather and Sustainable Funding and Financing between 1 July this yr and 2025.
Managing local weather affect is changing into more and more vital for companies in all sectors, as 71% of the world’s carbon emissions could be traced again to a disturbingly small variety of giant companies and so they must be held accountable for his or her affect. As a way to stop additional harm, extra monetary providers are embracing sustainable applied sciences. Moreover, monetary regulators have set pointers to observe and management local weather threat.