Sustainable action for an environmentally conscious future

Protecting the climate and the environment is a central part of our responsibility as NORD/LB. As “bank of the energy transition”, we view sustainability as a strategic driver of opportunity and align our actions consistently with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Our focus is on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonising our financing portfolios and ensuring the responsible use of natural resources. We actively support our clients in their transition towards more sustainable business models, particularly in emissions intensive sectors. At the same time, we continuously reduce our own environmental footprint and further strengthen the consideration of biodiversity aspects in our processes and financing decisions.

ESG Strategy

Transformation Guidelines

Green Funding Framework

CSRD Report

Sustainable financing & future fields

Our sustainability-related activities are based on NORD/LB's strategic alignment and the requirements of the regulatory framework. We continuously monitor how market segments, technologies and regulatory requirements are evolving, and examine which areas become relevant to our existing business areas. In this way, we ensure that we can identify changes at an early stage and evaluate them in a structured manner.

Sustainable finance

NORD/LB is active in various financing areas, including renewable energies, energy-efficient real estate and infrastructure projects. These areas are regularly reviewed on the basis of legal requirements, sectoral analyses and market developments. The results feed into our strategic considerations and support a well-founded assessment of future financing needs.

Technologies & Development Fields

In our assessments, we take into account technological and market developments that have the potential to impact our business. These include, for example, advances in the field of energy infrastructure, battery storage solutions or other applications that could become more relevant in the context of the transformation. NORD/LB systematically evaluates such developments and examines the extent to which they will have points of relevance to existing or new product areas in the future.

Sectoral analyses

The strategic development of sustainability-related business areas is based, among other things, on sector-specific analyses and the transformation guidelines developed by NORD/LB. These analyses help to better understand market dynamics, regulatory requirements and possible risks. This enables the Bank to assess which topics are becoming more important for a responsible business approach.

Dialogue & continuous development

The exchange with customers, network partners and other stakeholders provides important information on market- or technology-specific trends. Findings from this exchange are incorporated into the internal evaluation and support the ongoing development of our understanding of relevant sustainability topics and potential future fields.

Biodiversity

We see the protection of biodiversity as an integral part of our business model. We systematically take biodiversity risks into account in our financing and investment decisions, try to avoid negative impacts on sensitive ecosystems and will continue to promote transformation projects with a nature-positive impact in the future.

Our strategic alignment and objectives in the area of biodiversity are defined in our ESG strategy; specific binding requirements and test criteria for the lending business are set out in our Transformation Guidelines festgelegt.

Our emissions

We systematically record our CO₂ footprint (Scope 1 and 2 as well as Scope 3 categories 1–14) in line with the VfU standard (Association for Environmental Management and Sustainability in Financial Institutions). This includes emissions arising from the energy consumption of our buildings, business travel and other operational activities. Data collection follows recognised methodological standards and enables transparent management of our emissions. On this basis, we derive targeted reduction measures, for example by improving building efficiency, optimising space utilisation and adapting our mobility concepts. We report progress and deviations regularly through our internal sustainability reporting.

10.805 tCO2e

Scope-1 & Scope-2
emissions 2025

88,5 %

of the company car fleet will be fully electrified in 2025

NORD/LB's sector strategies: Clear course for sustainable business

We make our contribution transparent with goals, status and next steps in the most important industries in our portfolio. We are shaping the transition to a more sustainable economy step by step and showing how we are evolving our loan portfolios. Our transition paths make transparent how we define goals across sectors, measure progress and identify levers for transformation. On this basis, we can present developments in a comprehensible way – from the current status to target images to measures that we advance together with our customers. In this way, we are making our contribution to promoting stable business models in the long term and providing sustainable financing impulses. The transition pathways form a core of our ESG orientation and are continuously evolving. Additional information can be found in our ESG strategy.

ESG Strategy

Management of ESG risks

For us, sustainability is a central component of solid bank management. That is why we systematically integrate environmental, social and governance risks (ESG risks) into all relevant decision-making and control processes.

We analyse how climate and natural risks influence our clients' business models, markets and portfolios, and incorporate these insights into credit decisions, limit structures and our risk strategy. A special focus is on transitory and physical climate risks as well as biodiversity risks.

Our ESG scoring creates transparency at the individual client level, while we assess the long-term impacts of different climate pathways through sector strategies and scenario analysis. The results are incorporated into our credit processes, business planning and risk management, and are regularly monitored via internal sustainability reporting.

In this way, we ensure that risks are identified at an early stage and managed responsibly in order to reliably accompany our customers in their transformation.

Contact

Chief Sustainability Officer

Hanover