Fifth Third Bank’s
Environmental
Sustainability Initiative
Fifth Third is committed to environmental leadership and to leading the transition to a sustainable future.
Our commitment is rooted in our desire to build strong communities, to serve our customers well and our Vision to be the One Bank people most value and trust. We are driven by our understanding that integrating sustainability into all aspects of our Company creates long-term sustainable value and strengthens the communities we serve.
To advance our commitment and achieve our Vision, Fifth Third is focused on three strategies:
Supporting a sustainable transition
by helping our customers and communities prepare for climate-related risks and opportunities
Managing climate-related risk
facing our company, including those related to physical and transition risks.
Reducing our environmental footprint
through renewable energy, energy efficiency and other operational improvements across our enterprise.
Transition to a Sustainable Future
Fifth Third is committed to helping our customers and communities move to a low carbon, sustainable future and achieve positive social outcomes. In 2022, we achieved our $8 billion sustainable finance goal nearly three years ahead of schedule. The goal had focused on renewable energy lending and financing for solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and hydropower projects. In achieving this goal, Fifth Third helped facilitate the completion of more than 600 renewable energy projects across 28 states.
After achieving our $8 billion renewable energy goal, Fifth Third expanded our aim in 2022 and announced a 10-year, $100 billion environmental and social finance target through 2030. The new target continues our commitment to accelerating the transition to and support for more sustainable and inclusive growth.
Environmental categories within the framework for the $100 billion target include renewable energy, green buildings, energy efficiency, clean transportation, circular economy, pollution prevention and control, and other environmental categories such as sustainable water and wastewater management, climate change adaptation, and terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity. Social categories eligible under the Bank’s new $100 billion target include affordable housing, access to essential services, access to basic infrastructure, employment generation, food security and sustainable food systems and socioeconomic advancement and empowerment. Also included in the new target are sustainability-linked loans and sustainability bonds.
In 2022, Fifth Third completed the acquisition of Dividend Finance, a leading national provider of solar and sustainable home improvement financing. Fifth Third now offers residential financial services and assist homeowners by promoting innovative energy efficiency, decarbonization and peak energy reduction by deploying, integrating and financing a wide range of distributed energy technologies. The technologies include smart thermostats, fuel-cells, smart electric panels, electric vehicle chargers, solar PV and more.
Climate Risk Management
Fifth Third identified climate-related risks as an "emerging" risk in 2017. Since then, the Bank has updated its Enterprise Risk Management Framework to define climate risk for the Bank, and physical and transition risk was incorporated into each of our risk types to describe how climate risk could impact inherent or residual risk.
Physical risks from a changing climate are already present and growing. These risks can be acute (event-driven) or chronic longer-term shifts in the environment. Transitioning to a lower-carbon economy may also present additional risks such as energy transition policies, disruptive technological advancements including clean energy development storage, and shifts in consumer preferences.
The integration of climate risk into the framework was among the first tasks of the Bank’s newly appointed climate risk officer in 2021. The appointment underscores the Bank’s commitment to managing climate risk and ensures the development and maturation of the Bank’s climate risk identification and monitoring program as well as scenario analysis.
In 2022, Fifth Third published its second Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) Report. The 2021 TCFD Report demonstrates the Company’s progress in implementing the TCFD’s recommendations and summarizes the Bank’s advancement in climate-related disclosures since its inaugural report in late 2019. The report covers the Bank’s governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets. The Bank’s Environmental & Social Policy identifies sectors that pose heightened environmental and social risks. In 2019, informed by the work of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), we published our first TCFD-aligned report around the themes of governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets.
In 2020, we published a new Environmental and Social Policy, updated in 2021, that identifies sectors that pose heightened environmental and social risks.
Operational Sustainability
Operational sustainability, the reduction of our own environmental and carbon footprint, has been key to our environmental sustainability program since its inception in 2010. In addressing our own environmental impact, we better prepare our organization for future changes by reducing our exposure and risk to decarbonization, energy market volatility and potential carbon pricing scenarios.
In 2017, Fifth Third set five bold sustainability goals to help prioritize our environmental sustainability efforts. This included targeted goals to reduce our energy use and location based GHG emissions by 25%, to reduce our water consumption and waste sent to a landfill by 20%, and to purchase 100% renewable power. To date, we have successfully achieved four of these goals (energy, water, GHG emissions, and renewable power). Although we have not yet achieved our waste reduction goal, we have made great progress in reducing our waste by more than 1 million pounds annually. Further, we are committed to continuing our work in this area, increasingly reducing the amount of material we use and recycling as much as we can.
Building on those five original goals, Fifth Third in 2022 announced a new set of goals to be achieved by 2030. They include bolder commitments that will help guide our continuing efforts and ensure progress in vital areas of operational sustainability.
Additional Information:
Fifth Third Bank Investor Relations’ ESG Site
Fifth Third Bancorp 2020 Environmental, Social and Governance Report
Fifth Third Bancorp Environmental and Social Policy
Environmental Data
