Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials

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Definition

Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) is a financial industry-led partnership to facilitate transparency and accountability of the financial sector to the Paris Agreement. It is the leading finance industry–led methodology for measuring and disclosing absolute financed emissions.

The Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard was developed by the PCAF Global Core Team, a heterogeneous group of banks and investors of varied sizes and from different regions. The purpose of the Standard is to provide financial institutions with transparent, harmonized methodologies to measure and report the emissions they finance through loans and investmements. The scope is both direct and indirect emissions, based on a set of overarching accounting principles and covering different asset classes, from sovereign bonds to corporate and SME loan portfolios. It does not provide for an explicit emission target per sector or portfolio, according to which an alignment as such could be measured.

GHG Protocol References

The Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard for the Financial Industry builds on the GHG Protocol standards for corporate reporting such as

  • the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard
  • the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard, and
  • the supplemental Technical Guidance for Calculating Scope 3 Emissions.

PCAF Asset Classes

The Standard currently covers (proposes specific methodologies) for the following asset classes:

  • Listed Equity
  • Corporate Bonds
  • Business Loans
  • Unlisted Equity
  • Commercial Real Estate
  • Mortgages
  • Project Finance
  • Motor Vehicle Loans
  • Corporate Debt
  • Corporate/SME Loans
  • Public Loans
  • Indirect Investments

PCAF Members

An up-to-date list of participating (disclosing or committed to) institutions is available here.

PCAF requirements of GHG accounting and reporting

The PCAF Standard supplements the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard by providing additional detailed guidance per asset class. The complete list is available here

Example

  • For instance, in the case of mortgages, financial institutions should cover absolute scope 1 and 2 emissions related to the energy use of the property financed through the mortgage.
  • When calculating financed emissions, a building’s annual emissions are attributed to the mortgage provider using a loan-to-value approach; that means that the attribution is equal to the ratio of the outstanding amount at the time of the GHG Accounting to the property value at loan originiation.
  • The financed emissions are then calculated by multiplying this attribution factor by the emissions of the building (which are calculated as the product of a building’s energy consumption and a specific GHG Emission Factor for each source of energy consumed.

See Also