As an international financial institution with a public mandate, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) strives to implement environmental, social, and governance (ESG) best practices within its operations.
This 2022 publication is the fourth in a continuing series. The report provides a comprehensive account of the ESM’s carbon footprint arising from its operations in Luxembourg City, covering the full year of 2021. It also compares the 2021 performance against previous years as well as its 2018 baseline year performance.
As in previous years, carbon footprint estimates are based on an extensive review of internal and external documentation and activity data, as well as exchanges with external data providers. The report is prepared in accordance with the International Greenhouse Gas Protocol – a Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard. Furthermore, teleworking emissions were estimated following best practices as set out by EcoAct in their 2020 Homeworking emissions Whitepaper, as done in the 2020 report.
The calculations are performed with the assistance of KPMG Luxembourg Société Anonyme. KPMG N.V. Netherlands conducted an additional review of the calculations and assumptions, following the four-eyes principle.
The ESM is committed to producing a carbon footprint report on an annual basis to monitor its progress in decreasing its carbon footprint. In the spirit of transparency, the report is made available to the public.
In line with the 2020 Carbon Footprint Report, the present report also takes into account teleworkingrelated emissions linked to prolonged Covid-19 restrictions in 2021, based on estimates.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, numerous national and ESM-specific measures were implemented to contain the spread of the pandemic and ensure the safety of staff members. These measures significantly altered the ESM’s business operations, initially leading to a strong decline in the institution’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 and a further modest decrease in in 2021.
Covid-19 containment measures continued to affect the ESM’s business operations throughout 2021, leading for example to a significant decline in business travel. Furthermore, as of 16 March 2020, the ESM introduced social distancing measures within its premises that remained in place during 2021. Although the ESM largely maintained energy requirements for the ESM premises to keep the building operational and available to a reduced number of staff members, occupancy was restricted with teleworking continuing to be the default approach for most of 2021. The ESM expects greenhouse gas emissions to rise again in 2022 in line with the relaxation of Covid-19 measures and corresponding return to office presence and pre-pandemic practices.
The ESM is, however, committed to monitoring the emission sources related to these new working patterns and to finding solutions to mitigate them. To effectively understand the impact of teleworking, the ESM added to this report a separate chapter with estimates on teleworking-related emissions and a section further analysing and contextualising the impact of teleworking on gross and net emissions (Chapter 2.3).