Reducing Emissions Associated with Banking

The benefits of this project

Opportunity for improvement

• UK banks are compounding the climate crisis by funnelling billions of pounds into climate damaging projects. In 2022 alone, the five big UK high street banks (Barclays, HSBC, Santander, Lloyds, and NatWest) provided £29 billion of financial support to fossil fuel companies. All banks have some impact - but some are worse than others through their investment strategies.
• Measuring the impact of a practices bank is difficult. A practice may have several different accounts in use. For example, a current account, savings account, loan account, mortgage account etc.
• A practice with about one and a half million-pound annual turnover means over £100,000 passing through the current account every month. The impact if banking with Barclays of 2.5 tonnes of emissions for every £10,000, equates to 25 tonnes each and every month. Changing to an alternative low impact bank means using the same accounts, but with a reduction in harmful impact of over 80%.
• In a survey of GP practices, the majority are interested in changing accounts to a bank with a better environmental profile.
• This project aims to (see disclaimers):
  • Identify the environmental impact of the bank provider through the carbon emissions generated
  • Identify lower harm alternatives and explore the option around switching bank
  • Help practices identify a better bank for them financially and for the planet
  • You might like to create a SMART goal for this project e.g. review carbon impact of current banking provider and switch to lower impact provider within next 12 months if current provider is likely to contribute >1t emissions per £10k. 
• Links to wider resources & education on the topic. 
  https://www.mymothertree.com/
  https://bank.green/
  https://www.bankingonclimatechaos.org/

How to carry out this project

How to scale this project up or down

Please note - Use of this project requires NetworkPLUS membership. If you would like to share this project with others, please invite them to purchase their own membership—access must not be shared with non-members.

You might like to organise an education session for staff to raise awareness of the carbon impact of banking and how to switch banking providers if staff want to. 

Larger organisations such as ICBs can encourage and enable GP practices to use a bank switching service e.g. group switching, negotiating the best deals etc.

Have you completed this QIP?

Tell us a little about your project in order to generate a certificate showing the probable benefits. This project may help with CQC evidence submission (see disclaimers).