ESG DAILY: Why Those Bank Emissions Numbers Seem So Rosy

On the surface, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup and Mizuho Financial Group all appear to be delivering on their promises to cut carbon emissions.

• The three banks (along with most of their peers) have committed to eliminating financed emissions — the greenhouse gas-pollution enabled by their lending and investing — starting with the most carbon-intensive areas of their balance sheets
• In sustainability reports published this year, all three banks said those numbers had come down — in some cases significantly
• Yet if one reads the footnotes, one would discover that their emissions have fallen in large part due to technical factors outside ...