We actively minimize the environmental impact from our direct business operations by continuously improving our environmental performance, using resources as efficiently as possible, leveraging the advantages of new technology, optimizing building operations, reducing business travel, and increasing our use of renewable energy.
To understand and report our operational emissions, we apply the international greenhouse gas (GHG) standard ISO 14064. We also apply ISO 50001 in our energy management strategy in Germany, while across Europe we follow the European Energy Directive (EED) in all relevant countries, based on the energy audit requirements of local legislation.
As part of our ISO 14064 commitment, we have developed an internal governance framework to manage data collection and define our management approach to environmental reporting, as well as established an environmental management system to capture data. Due to the timing of this publication and the availability of data sources such as energy bills, we have performed limited amounts of extrapolations to complete the year’s data set. We continue to assess whether this makes a material difference to our data.
Together with other divisions within the bank and our facility management partners, we collate data from multiple sources including our utilities and energy bureau, travel providers, engineering maintenance logs, and waste and paper records. Each year, our Eco-Performance Management Office (Eco-PMO) also conducts an in-depth analysis of the data to help us evaluate the performance of initiatives against targets and to leverage synergies between our geographical regions.
The general philosophy of the management approach has been to reduce consumption by operational activities, for example increasing energy efficiency, reducing energy consumption with new technology, and optimizing the operation of our buildings. To this end, we take a full life-cycle approach, ensuring that energy efficiency is considered—from design and specification to procurement. We also seek to maintain the supply of renewable electricity where it is available as part of a de-regulated market.
In line with this, we set an annual target of a 1% reduction in our electricity consumption between 2015 and 2018. In 2017, we exceeded this with a 1.7% reduction, or 5 GWh of energy savings, and have revised our 2018 target to 1.5%. We also set targets to reduce electricity consumption by 2% a year. We track progress monthly via energy target reports at a global and regional level. These help to ensure the timely implementation of energy-efficiency measures wherever possible. Further details on energy performance can be found in the footnotes to the data tables below.
The measures and the initiatives required to meet our targets were fully established by the end of 2017, with measurement and verification managed by the Eco-PMO. Further measures in other divisions include reducing paper consumption and waste by implementing pull-print technology, which has been a success.
The Management Board endorses our commitment to carbon neutrality and the Global Head of Service Delivery in Corporate Services reviews progress annually as part of ISO 50001. This review takes into account global trends and developments; for example, in 2017, we expanded our energy KPI (kWh/m2) to take into account energy utilization (kWh/headcount).
We continue to report on the environmental impact of our operations, which derives mainly from the buildings and travel, while energy, GHG emissions, water, paper, and waste are the main drivers of environmental impacts. Significant progress has also been made in how we report supply chain emissions, which we capture in our CDP submission.
As part of the energy management framework, we have Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in place to ensure that we adhere to its due diligence obligations. These documents are available to all employees and we track progress via the Three Lines of Defence (3LoD) framework. Topics covered include utility management (cost and consumption) and load capacity management (appropriate infrastructure equipment for energy management).