To commemorate World Environment Day, National Australia Bank (NAB) today announced a key milestone in its sustainability journey, celebrating 10 years of carbon neutrality.

Carbon emission savings for the bank is the equivalent to the removal of approximately one million cars off the road over a year. [1]

NAB was the first Australian owned bank to achieve carbon neutrality under the National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS) Carbon Neutral Program in 2010 (now known as Climate Active).^[2]

NAB Group Executive – Corporate & Institutional Bank David Gall said sustainability and taking action on climate change was a priority for the bank and for its customers, with refreshed targets announced in November 2019.

“Back in 2010, we were the first Australian bank to achieve carbon neutrality and that was a very exciting moment for colleagues right across our organisation. But it doesn’t stop there. We have new targets approved for 2025 including our RE100 commitment to have all electricity from renewable sources, bringing us together with businesses committed to only using renewable electricity,” he said.

“Importantly, taking action on climate is important to our customers. Earlier this year, we surveyed a broad cross-section of small to medium business owners right across Australia. We knew climate change mattered to Australian business owners, but we didn’t appreciate just how much it mattered to them.”

“An overwhelming 90 per cent of surveyed Australian SMEs expressed concern about climate change risk and the environment. Over 70 per cent revealing their view on climate change had changed since the recent bushfires.”

As part of NAB’s accelerated $70 billion commitment to environmental finance by 2025, over $17 billion has already been arranged to support green infrastructure finance, capital markets and asset finance.

A further $16 billion is supporting mortgage lending flow for energy efficient residential housing in Australia, positively impacting over 41,000 households across the country.

“On World Environment Day, it’s important to recognise that climate action has continuing relevance in a post COVID-19 world. This is the time to make long-term business decisions focused on resilient and sustainable principles,” Mr Gall said.

NAB’s action on climate:

• Signing up to the UN Principles for Responsible Banking Collective Commitment on Climate Action which commits NAB to aligning our lending portfolio to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
• Increasing NAB’s Renewable Energy commitment from 50% to 100% by 2025 and signing up to the RE100 initiative.
• Remaining carbon neutral across domestic and global NAB operations and committing to higher standard energy performance for our buildings.
• Increase NAB’s environmental finance commitment from $55 billion to $70 billion by 2025.
• Arranging over AUD$10 billion in renewable energy project finance since 2003, backing more than 130 domestic and global transactions involving wind farms and solar parks.
• Raising A$4.5 billion through NAB green and social bond issuance, in addition to bringing another 25 green, social and sustainability bonds to market for clients across Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America.
• Australia’s first retail green term deposit offering for UBank, first green residential mortgage-backed security for NAB and first domestic green bond for NAB.

[1] On average each car in Australia emits 181gCO2-e/km. Source: https://www.ntc.gov.au/transport-reform/light-vehicle-emissions On average each car in Australia travels 13,301km/per year. Source: https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/9208.0 . Total annual carbon emissions per car is 2.4 tonnes of carbon per car per year (average car travels 13,301km and average emissions per km is 181 grams). NAB has offset 2.6 million tonnes of carbon over 10 years. 2.6 million tonnes of carbon over 10 years/2.4 tonnes of carbon per car per year = NAB’s cumulative cars of the road figure is more than 1 million cars off the road for a year.

[2] This has been achieved through a concentrated focus on energy efficiency, the use of cleaner energy sources, and the purchasing and retirement of offsets to neutralise remaining emissions. NAB’s offsets focus on renewable energy projects internationally and domestic carbon offsets developed through traditional Indigenous land-practices such as savannah burning.