sectoral economic costs and benefits of ghg mitigation - IPCC

Households and Services
This definition and the calculation method that goes with it were developed and published by the
Association for Environmental Management in Banks, Savings Banks and Insurance companies
(VfU 1998). Figure 1 shows the annual CO 2 emissions from certain banks and insurance
companies in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The exact values can be seen in Annex I at the
end of this paper.
The companies with emissions of roughly 1,000 tonnes are small and medium-sized financial
service providers, some operating at local level only. The companies that produce up to 90,000
tonnes of emissions annually are the big, international banks and insurance companies. The
figures given are for head office emissions only or for all branches in the respective country.
Figures for overall, worldwide emissions for international banks and insurance companies are not
yet available.
The next diagram (Figure 2) shows the huge differences in CO 2 intensity of various financial
service providers. Annual emissions per employee vary from under 2 to over 8 tonnes. This is in
part attributable to different areas of activity, but also to the varying efficiency of installations
such as air conditioning systems and computer centres.
Compared with per capita emissions of many countries (e.g. Chile 3.8; China: 2.8; Egypt 1.6;
Ghana 0.2; India 0.9; Spain 6.5; Turkey 2.9; Usbekistan 4.3 tonnes per capita; IEA 1999), the
provision of financial services causes a significant amount of greenhouse gases.
Taking the average “emissions-per-employee” we can calculate the share of the financial sector
in national emissions in Germany.
Figure 2 Annual CO 2
Emissions per Employee
Metric Tonnes
9,0
8,0
7,0
6,0
5,0
4,0
3,0
2,0
1,0
0,0
10 18 12 7 33 16 24 27 9 8 2 32 20 23 19 30 15 3 29 5 22 1 17 14 25 28 21 31 6 13 26 4
Company Number
262