A publicly traded regional bank in the United States with billions in annual revenue is committed to environmental stewardship. It has aligned its climate strategy with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), focusing on addressing climate risk, growing climate finance, supporting community resilience, and reducing its own carbon emissions.
As part of this mission, the regional bank is investing in renewable energy projects to achieve their renewable energy procurement goals and is increasing the total number of sustainable finance loans across its portfolio. The regional bank is a member of the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF), a global coalition working to advance carbon accounting in the financial sector.
In 2023, it partnered with Persefoni with the goal of automating and expanding its carbon accounting practice.
A need for audit-ready climate disclosures
The regional bank’s leadership recognized the clear trend towards increased global climate disclosure. As part of the highly regulated banking sector, they took proactive steps to enhance their disclosure efforts. The regional bank decided to transition to an automated carbon accounting process with built-in controls and transparency. They wanted a system that would allow them to trace emissions across a variety of scopes and categories, laying the groundwork for auditable climate disclosures. “Now we’re better prepared for upcoming challenges related to GHG emissions reporting on more complex topics like Scope 3 Category 15: Investments aka Financed Emissions,” says their Head of Sustainability Analytics.
Modernizing and automating calculations
Partnering with Persefoni enabled them to work efficiently in-house to build a comprehensive and auditable CO2e ledger, and the transparency and traceability provided by the platform set them up to reach their goal of reasonable assurance over their emissions data.
Expert support at every step
Automation did not mean sacrificing hands-on, tailored support. Persefoni’s experts were available at every step in the process and worked to understand the bank’s unique operations and needs. With their guidance, the team used the platform to calculate emissions in all three categories (scopes 1,2, and 3). They are now leveraging the tool to further expand their carbon accounting, and they recently completed an assurance process to validate all the data calculated within the platform. “It was helpful to have external assistance throughout the process and support compiling information, ensuring we were aligned”, says their Head of Sustainability Analytics. “It ended up being a smoother process than we anticipated.”
Looking ahead: Expanding and streamlining calculations
The regional bank is building on its initial success to create a more comprehensive emissions picture. It is exploring calculations in new sub-categories, including Purchased Goods & Services and Financed Emissions from across their investment and lending portfolio. They aim to further streamline carbon accounting with Persefoni by automating data collection, modification, and uploads. They are also working to integrate enhanced analytics and reporting capabilities — all with the goal of building confidence in their climate reporting and making more efficient and effective emissions reductions.
