The Guidelines for Climate Target Setting for Banks outline key principles to underpin the setting of credible, robust, impactful and ambitious targets in line with achieving net zero by 2050 greenhouse gas emissions goals, including these four overarching principles:

  1. Banks shall individually and independently set and publicly disclose long-term and intermediate targets to support meeting a net zero by 2050 greenhouse gas emissions goal.
  2. Banks shall establish an emissions baseline and annually measure and report the emissions profile of their lending, investment, and capital markets activities.
  3. Banks shall use widely accepted science-based decarbonisation scenarios to set both long-term and intermediate targets that are aligned with a net zero by 2050 goal.
  4. Banks shall regularly review targets to ensure consistency with current climate science.

NZBA members commit to apply these Guidelines. These Guidelines are also to be applied by members of the Principles for Responsible Banking that have selected climate mitigation as one of their priority impact areas and should set climate targets within four years of joining.

The original version of the Guidelines for Climate Target Setting for Banks, published to coincide with the launch of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance in April 2021, states that the guidelines, ‘…will be reviewed at least every three years.’ To meet this commitment, NZBA banks led a review of the original version of the guidelines from January 2023. A large number of member banks shared their views on what an updated version might look like, informed by their experience of applying the original version of the guidelines, setting and implementing climate targets, and financing transitions in different sectors. Based on these consultations, NZBA developed a new proposed version which the membership voted to adopt in March 2024.

The new version reflects changes in science, regulation, data, and methodologies that took place in the three years since the original version was published. It reinforces the guidelines, further outlining key principles to underpin the setting of credible and ambitious targets in line with achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement. The updated version of the guidelines will apply to all new targets and any new iterations of existing targets set by NZBA member banks after 22 April 2024.