Legal & Regulatory News

UNEP FI publish guidelines for banks on setting climate targets

On 21 April 2021, the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) published the 'Guidelines for Climate Target Setting for Banks' (the Guidelines). The Guidelines outline four principles to underpin the setting of credible, robust, impactful and ambitious targets in line with achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement:

1. Banks shall set and publicly disclose long-term and intermediate targets to support meeting the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement.
2. Banks shall establish an emissions baseline and annually measure and report the emissions profile of their lending portfolios and investment activities.
3. Banks shall use widely accepted science-based decarbonisation scenarios to set both long-term and intermediate targets that are aligned with the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement.
4. Banks shall regularly review targets to ensure consistency with current climate science.

The Guidelines underpin the UN-convened Net-Zero Banking Alliance, launched on 21 April 2021 by 43 global banks which are committed to aligning their lending and investment portfolios with net-zero emissions by 2050.

Click here to access the Guidelines.

Click here to access the webpage on the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.