Climate

ING has been climate neutral in our operations since 2007, but it’s not enough to only look inwards—we know that our biggest impact is in our financing. As a bank, that’s how we can help transition to a greener economy with a smaller carbon footprint. For example, ING has invested billions of euros in wind farms, solar energy, and geothermal power production.

Our business supports the transition to a low-carbon economy, for example through our green bonds, our circular economy programme and a sustainable loan construction where clients are given better interest rates for having a better rating with Sustainalytics.

We’re also committed to understanding the impact our lending has on the climate in order to steer our business in the right direction. We have a loan book of over €600 billion euros (as at 30 September 2018) across many sectors, which we will now begin steering towards meeting the Paris Agreement’s two-degree goal.

We’re able to start doing this by co-creating an innovative, accurate way to measure our portfolio, called the Terra approach. With this, we’re the first global bank to commit to using science-based scenarios to steer our business strategy.

The Terra approach looks at the technology shift that’s needed across certain sectors to keep the rise of global temperatures to well below two degrees Celsius. Terra then measures that needed shift in technology against the actual technology clients are using today and planning on using in the future.

We recognise the need for transition and the importance of having a strong government policy on climate, including a price on carbon. You can read more in ING's aproach to climate action.

We’ve also endorsed initiatives including the following in an effort to have the most impact:

We know that transparency is an important aspect of sustainability, and have published a detailed breakdown of our portfolio by sector.

We also decided to accelerate the reduction of our financing to coal power generation, reducing our exposure to close to zero by 2025. This policy, which goes a step further than the policy update in November 2015, is part of our efforts to support the transition to a low-carbon economy. Read more on our energy page.

We accept the science that climate change is largely human induced, primarily by burning fossil fuels emitting carbon dioxide. Still, the fact is that the economy (and a number of countries in particular) can’t yet do without fossil fuels. There is still too little renewable energy and experts haven’t yet been able to develop an efficient and affordable means of storing sustainable energy.