Meeting real needs with concrete solutions. - Investor Relations ...

Climate protection driven by responsibility
and commercial interest
For HVB, climate protection is an ethical obligation and a line of
business at the same time. As a result of this, we contribute to
ecologically sustainable development at different levels: through
energy-efficient banking operations, as a member of various industry
initiatives, through sustainable financial products and services like
the financing of renewable energy, and by sensitising our customers
to climate protection.
We manage climate and resource protection within the Bank by
means of an in-house environmental management system, which
has been successfully recertified since 2006. HVB obtains its
electricity solely from renewable sources, and we offset heating
energy with deactivated carbon certificates, with a view to running
all our buildings in a way that is climate neutral. With the opening of
a new branch in Lübeck, we started low-resource operation of a
green building during 2011. We are looking to convert our tower
and future corporate headquarters in Munich’s Arabellapark to the
same basis in the coming years.
In 2010, HVB already met the climate goal defined by UniCredit of
reducing in-house carbon emissions by 30 percent throughout the
corporate group by 2020. We have implemented 80 percent of our
next project of making our entire banking operations climate neutral.
An important role in this is played by our internal guidelines for
procurement, the organisation of events and the climate-neutral
mailing of letters and packages. And we are making business travel
by train climate neutral by means of an appropriate agreement with
Deutsche Bahn. HVB won the Green Fleet Award in 2011 for converting
its vehicle fleet to small, fuel-efficient vehicles. A cooperation
project with South Pole Carbon Asset Management, a prestigious
developer of climate protection projects, gives our employees the
chance to calculate and offset their private carbon footprint on the
intranet.
HVB is involved in numerous initiatives relating to climate protection as
a social objective. As an active member of the Association for Environmental
Management and Sustainability in Financial Institutions (Verein
für Umweltmanagement und Nachhaltigkeit in Finanzinstituten e. V. –
VfU), we were actively involved in drawing up the biodiversity principles
for the financial sector published in 2011, which are indirectly related
to climate protection activities. We cooperate with other German financial
service providers and the German Federal Ministry of Education
and Research in the Finanzforum: Klimawandel. At a regional level, we
have joined with representatives of business, science, politics and society
in the Munich for Climate Protection Alliance. Through UniCredit,
we participate in the Carbon Disclosure Project, which aims to publicise
the climate risks of large companies. UniCredit is also one of the
initial signatories of the Declaration on Climate Change of the United
Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI) published
in 2007. Under this, we have undertaken to reduce our carbon footprint
and report on the results at regular intervals.
HVB achieves the greatest impact in terms of sparing the climate and
resources with its product portfolio. We provide our customers with
one of the broadest offerings of sustainable investments in Germany.
It covers all investment needs and volumes by means of individual or
standardised mandates in asset management and investment funds or
pension products, among other things. Furthermore, we offer various
investment products enabling our customers to participate in the
European Union’s emissions trading scheme that employs a market
approach to limit emissions of greenhouse gases.
We also help our retail, business and corporate customers to identify
energy-saving potential in their business premises or business activities.
We assist them with the planning of appropriate measures and
finance for direct implementation or with the aid of public subsidy programmes.
In this activity, we cooperate with experienced partners like
the internet platform co2-online and KfW Mittelstandsbank. With the
Green Building study we published in 2011, we provide our customers
with a coherent introduction to energy-optimised construction.
HypoVereinsbank · 2011 Annual Report 25