The Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) announced today that Paris-based global bank BNP Paribas has joined the initiative, committing to measure and disclose the emissions impact of its financing activities through the PCAF reporting standard.

Laurence Pessez, Global Head of Corporate Social Responsibility of BNP Paribas Group, said:

“Financing energy transition has been at the core of BNP Paribas’ environmental responsibility since 2011. This long-standing strategy yielded robust commitments like the one we took in 2021 to monitor our activities in order to move to financing a carbon neutral economy by 2050. Transitioning to a low-carbon economy is an important part of our newly released 2025 strategic plan, and we are also committed to disclosing our financed emissions based on 2022 data. Such commitments require consistent data and reporting, as well as collaboration with peers in order to develop common methodologies. We are therefore delighted to be joining PCAF to contribute to collectively tackle climate change.”

The PCAF is a global partnership of financial institutions, launched in 2019 with a mission to develop and implement a harmonized approach to assess and disclose the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with loans and investments. The organization has experienced rapid growth since launch, with the addition of BNP Paribas marking the 250^th signatory to join the initiative, which now represents nearly $72 trillion in financial assets.

In November 2020, the PCAF launched the Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard for the Financial Industry, designed to provide a standardized, robust and clear way for banks, asset managers, and asset owners to measure and report the GHG emissions impact of their loans and investment portfolios. According to the PCAF, the standard has become the single most widely used methodology for measuring and reporting financed emissions globally, and was recently officially embedded into the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures’ (TCFD) climate disclosure recommendations for financial services.

Going forward, the PCAF stated that it expects to publish the second edition of the PCAF Standard during second quarter of this year, which is expected to include methodologies for the GHG accounting of sovereign bonds and emission removals, with other initiatives under way targeting the measurement and reporting of insurance-associated emissions, and emissions from the facilitation of capital market instruments.

Giel Linthorst, Executive Director of PCAF and Director at Guidehouse, said:

“From local to global to local: from a Dutch financial initiative in 2015 to a global launch in 2019, 250 financial institutions are now collaborating at a local level. Helping each other to implement and improve the measurement and disclosure of Scope 3 emissions is key to the success of PCAF. It’s amazing to see the growth of signatories from all regions and all types of financial institutions and the strengths of collaboration.”