Why a Bank's Emissions Number Can Fall Without Anything Getting Cleaner
- 16 hours ago
- 2 min read
At its April shareholder meeting, ABN AMRO chief executive Marguerite Bérard told investors the bank would develop an absolute cap on the emissions financed by its loan book. Milieudefensie had put the question at five consecutive meetings. This time nobody had to ask.
Campaigners wanted it because of how the usual targets work. Most banks set intensity targets, which divide emissions by a unit of output such as a square meter of mortgaged building. Lend to more efficient buildings and more of them, and the ratio improves while the total tons climb.
An absolute target closes that gap and opens another. A bank does not report its clients' emissions. It reports a share of them, sized by how much money it currently has out to each client. If a client leaves a credit line undrawn, or the bank underwrites fewer bond deals, the reported figure falls without a ton being abated anywhere.
HSBC stated this plainly. Its oil and gas financed and facilitated emissions fell 46% between 2019 and 2023, and 27% in the final year alone, down to 23.2 million tons. The bank's own explanation was "divestments and other strategic decisions, and temporary factors such as low loan drawdown levels, and subdued capital markets activity." It then warned that a return to normal market conditions "will lead to increased financed emissions in our portfolio." A near halving, with investors told to expect some of it back.
Barclays says the quiet part in its methodology documents. Any event changing a client's valuation, it notes, moves the emissions attributed to the portfolio "despite no change in real-world emissions." Barclays uses book values rather than market ones for that reason.
So the number a bank publishes is not the useful thing. What moved it is. Since December 2025 the industry's own accounting standard has recommended that banks publish a fluctuation analysis setting out what changed between reporting periods and why. It is recommended, not required, and few produce one.
That is the standard to hold ABN AMRO's promise against. ShareAction ranks it third for decarbonization targets among Europe's 25 largest banks, and notes the rank would fall to twentieth if the bank moves to the below-2°C pathway it has signaled. Nordea already has what ABN AMRO has only promised to develop, a 40% to 50% absolute cut by 2030 across lending and investments. ABN AMRO has no figure or baseline year yet and excludes its investments entirely.
A ceiling on total tons is still a real constraint in a way a ratio is not. But a ceiling on a number that moves with loan drawdowns is worth only as much as the explanation attached to it. Ask a bank for its number. Then ask what made it move.
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