ING and climate: #10things
24 September 2018
... min read
24 September 2018
It’s time for Climate Week NYC, one of the world’s biggest gatherings around climate action. ING is there talking with stakeholders behind the scenes about our approach to climate change impact
Since it’s Climate Week NYC’s tenth anniversary, organisers launched a #10things campaign to rally supporters.
So here’s ING’s version, 10 facts about our approach to climate impact. Because as our global Sustainability head Leon Wijnands likes to say, “there’s more than one road to Paris.”
- We announced our ‘Terra’ approach at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco recently. With Terra, developed with the 2° Investing Initiative, we can begin to steer our €500 billion lending portfolio towards the Paris Agreement’s well-below two-degree goal. That makes us the first global bank to commit to using science-based scenarios to steer our business strategy.
- We aim to double our funding to organisations that help combat climate change and positively impact society and the environment. Deadline: 2022. (We had €14.6 billion in climate finance at the end of 2017.)
- We created the sustainable improvement loan, which offers corporate clients a lower interest rate for improved sustainability performance. So far we’ve done more than 15 of these deals, such as with Philips, DSM and Gecina.
- There are certain sectors we say no to, like coal power generation. We’ll reduce our funding to coal power generation to close to zero by 2025.
- When companies want funding but can still do better on sustainability, we sometimes say “yes, but…” and outline changes they need to make first. We feel we can make the most impact by having a dialogue with clients and supporting them in improving their environmental and social impact where possible.
- We only offer new financing for ‘green’ office buildings in the Netherlands and aim to only have green office buildings in the entire Dutch portfolio by 2023.
- ING launched Sustainable Investments early this year with €100 million of capital for sustainable ‘scale-ups’ that have a proven concept and make a positive environmental impact. The latest was an investment in circular economy company Black Bear Carbon, which recycles old tyres into carbon black, a raw material used to make things like pen ink and smartphone covers.
- Our own operations have been climate neutral since 2007 and we have bigger targets leading up to 2020. These include procuring 100% renewable energy for all buildings we operate worldwide and reducing our CO2e emissions by 50%, both by 2020.
- The design of our new global headquarters was awarded the highest sustainability rating. For example, the thousands of tonnes of concrete from the old building were recycled to build the new one, with the rest used for a new nearby highway.
- We share research and knowledge on climate change, like with our report on electric vehicles; and we partner with stakeholders like Renewable Energy 100% and global circular economy thought leader Ellen MacArthur Foundation. We know that accelerating change can’t be done alone.
