Choice 17. Net Zero Banking with Dr Sarah Kemmitt

What is Net Zero banking?

What is your bank doing about climate change? Not just their own emissions, but also the emissions they facilitate?

What does it have to do with you? Have you heard about green mortgages, green  loans and investments?

In previous episodes, we talked quite a bit about how we can spend our money on a variety of things, from as little as a re-usable mask, to as large as installing a heat pump or buying an electric vehicle.

But it’s just as, if not more, important to talk about how our hard-earned cash works for us, and for others.

In this episode, we talk about where we keep our money – in particular banks, and their environmental impact, behaviour and influence…

To talk about banking, we are joined by the most unlikely banker – or not really a banker – Dr Sarah Kemmitt. Sarah is one of those wonderful examples of a career wanderer - from a PhD in Ecology, to the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative, via Bank of England, and many more stops.

She talked to us about the Net Zero Banking Alliance and Make Money Matter 

We learn about how banks and other investors are responsible for not only their operational greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts, but also those they finance or facilitate through their investments. 

We also learn how, as individuals putting our money in banks, we have a right to enquire about banks' performance - what they invest in, what they divest from, what pledges they make and how they put those pledges into action. 

Finally, Sarah ends the podcast speaking about the power of asking the right questions....that seems to be half the battle.