像微软，Alphabet和Meta这样的公司已经为可再生能源和其他缩小公司碳足迹的方式进行了大量投资。但是，根据一份新报告，他们的排放中最大的部分来自他们的银行业务，而这一地区已经在雷达下滑落了。
例如，微软去年拥有1300亿美元的现金和投资。那个报告，碳资金：企业现金的气候影响和未开发的权力，published by a banking collaborative and climate nonprofits, estimates that the emissions from the company’s banking are comparable to all of its emissions from making, transporting, and using its products, based on data about how much banks invest in fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive industries. (Microsoft declined a request to comment.) For a company like Paypal, the carbon footprint from its banking in 2021 was 55 times higher than all of its other emissions combined. For Amazon, which has a bigger carbon footprint from its operations, financed emissions add 15% to the company’s total.
“Banks are primary investors in the economy, and they’re lending into new businesses and new infrastructure, which is going to be around for years and shape the economy for decades to come,” says James Vaccaro, executive director of the Climate Safe Lending Network, a global collaborative of banks, nonprofits, academics, investors, businesses, and policy experts, which partnered with the nonprofits The Outdoor Policy Outfit and BankFWD to put together the report. Last year, for example, the 60 largest banks invested $742 billion in fossil fuels, at the same time that the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that新的石油和天然气投资需要结束使世界有机会实现全球气候目标。还有更多的钱需要流向气候解决方案。
虽然股东一直在迫使银行采取气候行动，包括对决议的投票，以结束新的化石融资，这今年获得了比以往任何时候的支持- 播放时间很慢。但是，拥有大量现金的公司可以通过决定转移到气候意识的机构或要求其当前银行进行更改来直接影响银行。“To get a customer demand signal like this from these global companies that this is something they do care about, that’s going to be really powerful,” Vaccaro says, “and be able to unlock some of that talent and creativity within the financial system to be able to go full charge in helping design some solutions.”
Vaccaro说，公司可持续发展董事并未专注于财务足迹，当研究人员与公司交谈时，“其中许多人甚至都没有将财务供应链作为供应链。”Greenhouse Gas Protaste是一种全球系统来报告排放的全球系统，确实呼吁这种类型的会计，但是由于缺乏银行数据，公司过去尚未做到这一点。
由于许多大型银行已承诺通过碳会计财务合作伙伴关系Vaccaro说，并且现在正在研究该研究。为了汇编该报告，研究人员部分依靠一个名为South Pole的组织的估计从美国最大的银行计算出的排放，以及公司的现金持有和其他投资；尽管数字是粗略的估计，只能对这些排放的规模有所了解。
现在是先开拓新方法来采购可再生能源的公司，现在也可能首先开始要求其银行改变政策。Vaccaro说：“我认为主要的范式转变是人们已经醒来了，这绝对不是中立的。”“这是能够推动[气候]过渡的关键因素。”