ECB to publish first detailed carbon footprint – Reuters

LONDON, March 22 (Reuters) – The European Central Bank and euro zone national central banks will publish their first detailed carbon footprints in the coming days, showing the environmental impact of years of crisis-fighting.

The ECB and the 20 countries that use the single European currency have spent trillions of euros during years of rolling crises buying bonds, including those of companies that are heavy polluters.

“We will be disclosing the (ECB and Eurosystem) carbon footprint,” Clara Raposo, a vice governor at Portugal’s national central bank, told a sustainable policy conference hosted by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF).

Carbon footprints measure the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result of everyday activities.

For the ECB and euro zone national central banks, that includes their asset-buying programmes, as well as areas such as staff pensions.

The latest ECB figures show it owns corporate bonds worth just over 340 billion euros that it bought under its corporate sector purchase programme (CSPP), plus another 45 billion euros of bonds purchased with its COVID-era Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP).

While she wasn’t “particularly ecstatic” about the size of the carbon footprints, Raposo said it was an important process that provided a benchmark to work from.

The ECB is trying to take a more active role