2024-12-20
The total carbon footprint of Lietuvos bankas activities in 2023 was 6.1 thousand tonnes of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases, or an average of 9.4 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per employee.
Lietuvos bankas has been assessing and publishing the carbon footprint of its activities annually since 2017. In 2023, the calculations were significantly improved and audited by independent experts for the first time.
"We were one of the first in Lithuania to carry out an independent audit of an organisation's carbon footprint. This required a major review and improvement of the carbon footprint calculations, with a particular focus on the assessment of indirect emissions outside Lietuvos bankas," says Tomas Garbaravičius, Head of Climate Change Centre at Lietuvos bankas.
Greenhouse gas (GHG) [1] emissions have been calculated in accordance with international standards and cover all three scopes of direct and indirect GHG emissions. The largest share of Lietuvos bankas 2023 emissions is attributed to scope 3 (89%), which covers all indirect emissions from the organisation's activities outside Lietuvos bankas, except for scope 2 indirect emissions (9%), which are due to the consumption of energy (electricity and heating) produced outside Lietuvos bankas. Direct GHG emissions from Lietuvos bankas territory or its own facilities (scope 1) accounted for only 2% of the total carbon footprint.
Most organisations currently limit their carbon footprint assessment to the simpler calculations of scope 1 and 2 emissions, whereas scope 3 indirect emissions calculations are much more complex and require quite some internal and external data.
It should be noted that scope 3 also includes GHG emissions related to Lietuvos bankas investments in securities, the so-called financed emissions, which are not included in the published total carbon footprint. The GHG-related indicators of all Eurosystem securities acquired in the context of monetary policy is disclosed by the European Central Bank, while a climate-related assessment of Lietuvos bankas non-monetary portfolios is presented in a separate Lietuvos bankas report[2].
Lietuvos bankas continues to focus on reducing its carbon footprint. It intends to introduce various additional internal greening measures, such as replacing light fittings and water faucet nozzles with energy-saving ones.
According to Tomas Garbaravičius, "once the carbon footprint has been assessed, the next logical step is to develop an organisation’s decarbonisation plan, with specific and time-bound commitments to reduce the carbon footprint".
[1] Greenhouse gases (GHGs) – carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), perfluorocarbons (PFC) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). One tone of CO2e is the amount of GHGs that has the same impact on climate change as one tone of CO2; that is the amount of GHGs emitted by driving 6,000 km in a diesel car.
[2] Lietuvos bankas, Climate-related disclosures of Lietuvos bankas‘ non-monetary policy portfolios (2023), https://www.lb.lt/en/reviews-and-publications/category.38/series.7203.