Climate finance activists ShareAction and carbon accountancy platform Greenly have both levelled criticism against rumoured details within standards to be published by the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF).
Ire was directed towards the PCAF proposals on a disclosures framework for capital markets, ranging from its voluntary nature to delays to its publication.
PCAF styles itself as an industry-led partnership to facilitate transparency and accountability of the financial industry to the Paris Agreement.
The initiative was founded in 2015 by fourteen Dutch financial institutions under the leadership of ASN Bank. It expanded into North America in 2018, led by Amalgamated Bank using PCAF’s greenhouse gas accounting methodologies.
Of the proposed new framework, Alexis Normand, chief executive of Greenly, said: “The proposed compromise deal among banks to disclose carbon footprints of capital-markets operations is being hailed as a milestone in climate finance.
“However, voluntary standards led by industry players risk furthering the interest of a few banks over what's needed to effectively tackle climate change. A more robust, comprehensive and stringent regulatory framework is needed to effectively tackle the climate crisis. This framework should enforce mandatory reporting of no-less-than 100% facilitated emissions, backed by scientific assessments and oversight.”
Further points raised by Normand included that the reliance on voluntary initiatives like PCAF may allows banks to decide the standards themselves, potentially leading to underreporting, and that without the involvement of regulators and scientists, the rigour and credibility of the standards “would be questionable.”
A key issue within PCAF appears to be how much weighting is applied to capital markets activity accounted for in facilitated emissions, ranging massively from 17% to 100%. ShareAction analysis claimed to show that weightings fail to address the challenges put forward by proponents of this approach and that lower weightings would not correct for volatility of capital markets activity.
The NGO also alleged that, if this is adopted, “a number of banks could be underreporting their climate impact for years to come.”
Barclays was the first major bank to set net-zero targets covering capital markets facilitation. The bank applies a 33% weighting to its attributed share of capital markets volumes with the remaining portion allocated to investors.
A spokesperson for PCAF has stated that the working group is still in discussions over the framework, and decline to make further comment.
In March this year, ShareAction labelled Credit Suisse’s climate plan “not fit for purpose.”
