ING Publishes Annual Climate Report Highlighting Climate Progress

ING Group N.V., which also comprises ING Bank, has released its annual Climate Report, which provides a summary of the progress the firm has made in terms of taking climate action.

The report outlines how its financing impacts climate change, including driving its loan book toward global net-zero 1.5-degree climate goals, offering green financing and consulting to customers, and reaching net zero in its own operations. It also explains how climate change affects ING's business as it seeks to identify and minimise the risks in the portfolio.

ING CEO Steven van Rijswijk said: 

"The world looks very different now than in 2021 with the war in Ukraine, high inflation, and soaring energy prices. Everything happening makes us even more determined to achieve our goals and become a banking leader in building a sustainable future for our customers, society, and the environment. 

"We’re proud of the steps we’re taking and the transparency with which we share the progress towards our targets. But none of us can do this alone. For true transformative change to happen at the increasingly urgent speed it needs to, a concerted collaborative and consensus-based effort across all sections of society is desperately needed. We all have a part to play, and we can all do much more. Let’s do it together before it’s too late.”

The firm's work in directing its portfolio toward global climate targets - the Terra approach - is a crucial part of the report. It demonstrates that five industries are on the right track: power production, upstream oil and gas, automotive, commercial real estate, and shipping. 

Cement and residential real estate are both within 5% of their respective paths, while steel is just above 5%. Because of the significant impact that COVID-19 has had on the sector, aviation comes out substantially above the pathway, although it is beginning to trend back to its decarbonisation track as the sector recovers.

To encourage early climate action, ING has set interim targets for all nine sectors for 2030, in addition to its 2050 targets. The aims for eight of the nine sectors are now aligned with net-zero, 1.5-degree climate scenarios. 

The firm will update the previous one once a scenario is available. Furthermore, to make a greater impact, ING is broadening its regulatory reporting strategy to include additional carbon-intensive sectors, such as aluminium. 

In addition to directing its lending portfolio toward net-zero climate targets, it seeks to integrate biodiversity, human rights, and the circular economy into our integrated climate approach.

ING continues to adapt our approach to climate-related and environmental disclosures as it builds on its expertise in measuring and quantifying climate metrics and is in line with evolving regulatory and methodological developments. 

This helps the firm continuously improve its approach to climate action, including identifying opportunities to help clients with their net-zero ambitions. The ultimate goal is to support the decarbonisation of the global economy. This year, ING aligned the structure of its report with the structure recommended by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). This supports standardisation and comparability across the financial sector.

Source: ING

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