Environmental performance

Why is this important?

All organisations face challenges as they seek to address climate change, improve operational efficiency and use resources and natural capital more efficiently and sustainably. It’s everyone’s job to reduce carbon emissions. We're playing our part as a business while helping our customers to reach their reduction targets too. NAB has been carbon neutral for over a decade – the first Australian owned bank to get there. We’re continuing to cut emissions in all areas of our business.

Our environmental targets, assurance and certifications provide robust, transparent updates on our progress.

What do we do?

Our environmental performance targets help us measure our ambition and be accountable for progress in reducing our environmental impact.

Our 2020-2025 targets are detailed below. Significant progress towards the new targets was demonstrated in 2021, however, performance has been skewed by COVID-19 impacts and we do not expect all of the reductions achieved to date to be permanent. We will continue to drive efficiencies in our operations as business activity returns to levels consistent with those prior to COVID-19.

You can find more information about our 2025 environmental performance targets and our 2021 environmental performance in our Sustainability Data Pack (XSLX, 866KB).

Performance against these targets is presented in the tables below:

2025 Environmental Performance Targets

Our assurances and certifications

We believe independent assurance and third-party validation of our performance is important because it provides management and stakeholders with confidence in our reported performance data and information.

We undertake a range of annual assurance and third-party certification processes to give our stakeholders confidence in the credibility of our approach and data reported.

Regulatory reporting

NAB Group is subject to a range of environmental regulation, including reporting requirements. The key regulatory requirements are as follows:

• the Australian National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 (Cth) (NGER Act);
• the Australian National Environment Protection (National Pollutant Inventory) Measure (NPI NEPM);
• the Streamlined Energy & Carbon Reporting (SECR) requirements, which are implemented through the Companies (Directors’ Report) and Limited Liability Partnerships (Energy and Carbon Report) Regulations 2018 (United Kingdom);
• the UK Energy Savings Opportunities Scheme (ESOS), which was introduced by the ESOS Regulations 2014.

Further information on these regulatory requirements can be found in our Annual Financial Report, in the 'Environmental and social regulation, risk and opportunities' section of the Report of the Directors.

Assurance of our carbon neutrality

KPMG currently conducts limited assurance procedures over our carbon inventory in Australia, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Asia and the United States, and the progress we are making against our science based targets.

• Read more about our carbon neutral commitment and how we calculate our carbon inventory.
• Download KPMG’s most recent Carbon Neutral assurance report (PDF, 165KB).

The component of our Australian carbon inventory that must be reported under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act has been subject to reasonable assurance by KPMG.

• Download KPMG’s most recent NGER assurance report (PDF, 183KB)

KPMG has also conducted limited assurance over the following carbon risk disclosure information – (i) renewable energy disclosure; (ii) project finance sector segmentation and (iii) our environmental financing disclosure.

• Download KPMGs carbon risk disclosure limited assurance report (PDF, 166KB).

Third party certification for our carbon neutrality

In Australia, we have achieved certification under the Climate Active Carbon Neutral Program, for the emissions inventory we are monitoring and reporting for our Australian operations. We achieved our initial certification in December 2010 and re-certify our carbon neutrality annually. In 2016, we recommitted to be a part of the NCOS Carbon Neutral Program for a further five years.

You will find our latest annual Climate Active public disclosure summary in the environmental section of the resource library.

Download KPMG's NCOS assurance report (PDF, 97KB).