Managing our environmental impact

We're focusing on the areas where we have the greatest potential to make a difference as a business. We not only take proactive steps to reduce the direct impact of our own operations on the environment, we also recognise that we have a greater impact through our lending and investment activities.
 

Our 2011-2015 Climate Action Programme embraces this approach and sets clear objectives and actions around three priorities:

 

• Managing our own carbon footprint – including a commitment to reduce absolute carbon emissions by 4% by 2013 and continuing to offset the remainder
• Developing products and services to help enable the transition to a low carbon economy – including financing and risk management solutions to enable capital to flow to lower carbon opportunities
• Manage climate change risks – including collaborating with other stakeholders to manage the risks of climate change to our operations, our clients and to society at large.
   

We continue to improve the way in which we collect and monitor environmental data and recognise that our targets must take into consideration changes in our structure and operations as well as improvements in data quality. We are committed to being open and transparent about this process, and as such our environmental data is independently verified and assured by Ernst and Young.

We have a robust structure to manage the environmental impact of our global operations. Our Group Operations Committee oversees environmental issues and executives within each cluster are accountable for environmental sustainability in each region globally.