Hass McCook is a chartered engineer and freshly minted Oxford MBA. He has been researching bitcoin over the past several months and recently joined the Lifeboat Foundation’s New Money Systems advisory board.
This is the fourth in his five-part series that compares the relative sustainability of the bitcoin network with gold production, the production of physical currency, and the legacy banking system.
It is very hard to quantify the global impact of the banking and finance system, however, there are some key figures that we can draw on for an order-of-magnitude estimate.
The World Bank publishes several world development indicators, of which one is financial access. The table below shows their data and associated estimate calculations (World Bank, 2014), based on a world adult population of 5.325 billion people (Indexmundi, 2013).
A model developed by the CoolClimate Network at one of the world’s leading and most respected universities, the University of California, Berkeley (CoolClimate Network, 2014), assesses the carbon footprint of businesses based on business sector, the number of locations, employees, annual revenue, and square feet of facilities.
This allows us to estimate the carbon footprint of the world banking and finance industry within an order of magnitude. Inputs into the model are calculated below.
Bank branches
Model inputs
Number of employees
While it is difficult to quantify the number of people employed by the world’s banking and finance industry, using the Pareto principle (80-20 rule), the world’s largest 20% of banks most likely employ 80% of all banking employees. Employee statistics for the world’s largest 30 banks are shown in the table below.
Table 16 – Number of People Employed by the World’s 30 Largest Banks
Bank Name
No. Employees
Source
Agricultural Bank of China
444,238
abchina.com
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China
405,354
www.icbc.com.cn
China Construction Bank
329,338
www.ccb.com/en/home/index.html
State Bank of India
295,696
www.sbi.co.in
Bank of China
288,867
www.boc.cn
Sberbank
286,019
www.sbrf.ru
Wells Fargo & Co
264,900
www.wellsfargo.com
JP Morgan Chase & Co
255,041
www.jpmorganchase.com
HSBC Holdings
254,066
www.hsbc.com
Citigroup Inc.
251,000
www.citigroup.com
Bank of America
242,000
www.bankofamerica.com
BNP Paribas
200,000
www.bnpparibas.com
Banco Santander
186,763
www.santander.com
Société Générale
171,955
www.societegenerale.com
Crédit Agricole Group
161,280
www.credit-agricole.com
Unicredit Group
148,341
www.unicreditgroup.eu
Barclays PLC
139,900
www.barclays.com
Banco do Brasil
118,900
www.bb.com.br
Royal Bank of Scotland Group
118,600
www.rbs.com
Group BPCE
115,000
http://www.bpce.fr/en/
BBVA
109,305
www.bbva.com
Lloyds Banking Group
104,000
www.lloydsbankinggroup.com
Banco Bradesco
103,385
www.bradesco.com.br
Deutsche Bank
98,219
www.db.com
ING Group
84,718
www.ing.com
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
80,900
www.mufg.jp
Royal Bank of Canada
80,000
www.rbc.com
Bank of Communications Limited
79,122
www.bankcomm.com
Toronto-Dominion Bank
78,748
www.td.com
US Bancorp
65,565
www.usbank.com
TOTAL
5,561,220
Assuming that the 5,561,220 figure in the table above represents 80% of all bank employees, it can be concluded that there are a total of at least seven million people employed by banks and financial institutions internationally.
Annual revenue
An analysis undertaken by McKinsey & Company in 2012 shows global banking revenue of $3.4tn (McKinsey & Company, 2012).
Square foot area of facilities
From personal experience designing offices in Australia, a good rule of thumb is about 100 square feet per employee (10 square metres) to satisfy access and egress requirements in commercial building codes.
An area of 50-150 ft2 is recommended by the online US resource Engineering Toolbox (Engineering Toolbox, 2013). Using a value of 100 ft2 leads to a total area of about 60 million ft2 for the world’s 600,000 bank branches.
Model output and sensitivity analysis
Plugging the above inputs into the UCB model yields a result of 383.1 million tonnes of CO2 per year. A sensitivity analysis using four other scenarios shows little difference in overall footprint. Because the data on revenue is accurate, that variable remains fixed in all scenarios.
As can be seen from Table 17, the governing factor of the model appears to be the amount of yearly revenue generated, as significant changes to number of employees and branches have little effect on the model output.
Sense check
The World Resource Institute categorises world greenhouse gas emissions by end-use and activity (World Resources Institute, 2009).
In its 2009 report, it was identified that commercial buildings account for 6.3% of world emissions, and the mining of non-ferrous metals (including gold) and aluminium account for 1.3% – an impact ratio of commercial buildings to mining of 4.86.
Considering that only a relatively small amount of gold is mined every year (a few thousand tonnes), it is assumed that banks account for larger proportion of all commercial buildings, as gold mining does for non-ferrous metal mining.
This would mean that banks should have an impact of between six to eight times greater than that of gold. Having calculated a value of 54 million tonnes of CO2 produced by the gold mining industry, this would put the impact of the banking industry between 324 and 432 million tonnes of CO2, which is well within the same ballpark as the value of 380 million tonnes calculated by the UCB model.
ATMs
While ATMs reduce the need for bank branches, these machines have their own carbon footprint which isn’t insignificant.
It is estimated that each of the world’s 2,394,700 ATMs has an energy usage of 0.25 kWh (Roth, et al., 2002). This translates to a yearly energy use of 18.9 million GJ, or 3.2 million tonnes of CO2.
Summary
The environmental impact of the world’s financial access points are summarised in the table below
Using the rate of $100/MWh, the above energy use would equate to an annual energy bill of $63.8bn, or, roughly 2% of total revenue.
At 0.75 million tonnes of CO2 produced per year, Bitcoin has 99.8% fewer emissions than the banking system.
Check back next week for the concluding article in the series, in which Hass McCook undertakes a comparative summary of all three areas to evaluate the relative sustainability of the bitcoin network.
Bank image via Shutterstock
banksEnvironmentUnder the Microscope
It is very hard to quantify the global impact of the banking and finance system, however, there are some key figures that we can draw on for an order-of-magnitude estimate.
The World Bank publishes several world development indicators, of which one is financial access. The table below shows their data and associated estimate calculations (World Bank, 2014), based on a world adult population of 5.325 billion people (Indexmundi, 2013).
A model developed by the CoolClimate Network at one of the world’s leading and most respected universities, the University of California, Berkeley (CoolClimate Network, 2014), assesses the carbon footprint of businesses based on business sector, the number of locations, employees, annual revenue, and square feet of facilities.
This allows us to estimate the carbon footprint of the world banking and finance industry within an order of magnitude. Inputs into the model are calculated below.
Bank branches
Model inputs
Number of employees
While it is difficult to quantify the number of people employed by the world’s banking and finance industry, using the Pareto principle (80-20 rule), the world’s largest 20% of banks most likely employ 80% of all banking employees. Employee statistics for the world’s largest 30 banks are shown in the table below.
Table 16 – Number of People Employed by the World’s 30 Largest Banks
Bank Name
No. Employees
Source
Agricultural Bank of China
444,238
abchina.com
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China
405,354
www.icbc.com.cn
China Construction Bank
329,338
www.ccb.com/en/home/index.html
State Bank of India
295,696
www.sbi.co.in
Bank of China
288,867
www.boc.cn
Sberbank
286,019
www.sbrf.ru
Wells Fargo & Co
264,900
www.wellsfargo.com
JP Morgan Chase & Co
255,041
www.jpmorganchase.com
HSBC Holdings
254,066
www.hsbc.com
Citigroup Inc.
251,000
www.citigroup.com
Bank of America
242,000
www.bankofamerica.com
BNP Paribas
200,000
www.bnpparibas.com
Banco Santander
186,763
www.santander.com
Société Générale
171,955
www.societegenerale.com
Crédit Agricole Group
161,280
www.credit-agricole.com
Unicredit Group
148,341
www.unicreditgroup.eu
Barclays PLC
139,900
www.barclays.com
Banco do Brasil
118,900
www.bb.com.br
Royal Bank of Scotland Group
118,600
www.rbs.com
Group BPCE
115,000
http://www.bpce.fr/en/
BBVA
109,305
www.bbva.com
Lloyds Banking Group
104,000
www.lloydsbankinggroup.com
Banco Bradesco
103,385
www.bradesco.com.br
Deutsche Bank
98,219
www.db.com
ING Group
84,718
www.ing.com
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
80,900
www.mufg.jp
Royal Bank of Canada
80,000
www.rbc.com
Bank of Communications Limited
79,122
www.bankcomm.com
Toronto-Dominion Bank
78,748
www.td.com
US Bancorp
65,565
www.usbank.com
TOTAL
5,561,220
Assuming that the 5,561,220 figure in the table above represents 80% of all bank employees, it can be concluded that there are a total of at least seven million people employed by banks and financial institutions internationally.
Annual revenue
An analysis undertaken by McKinsey & Company in 2012 shows global banking revenue of $3.4tn (McKinsey & Company, 2012).
Square foot area of facilities
From personal experience designing offices in Australia, a good rule of thumb is about 100 square feet per employee (10 square metres) to satisfy access and egress requirements in commercial building codes.
An area of 50-150 ft2 is recommended by the online US resource Engineering Toolbox (Engineering Toolbox, 2013). Using a value of 100 ft2 leads to a total area of about 60 million ft2 for the world’s 600,000 bank branches.
Model output and sensitivity analysis
Plugging the above inputs into the UCB model yields a result of 383.1 million tonnes of CO2 per year. A sensitivity analysis using four other scenarios shows little difference in overall footprint. Because the data on revenue is accurate, that variable remains fixed in all scenarios.
As can be seen from Table 17, the governing factor of the model appears to be the amount of yearly revenue generated, as significant changes to number of employees and branches have little effect on the model output.
Sense check
The World Resource Institute categorises world greenhouse gas emissions by end-use and activity (World Resources Institute, 2009).
In its 2009 report, it was identified that commercial buildings account for 6.3% of world emissions, and the mining of non-ferrous metals (including gold) and aluminium account for 1.3% – an impact ratio of commercial buildings to mining of 4.86.
Considering that only a relatively small amount of gold is mined every year (a few thousand tonnes), it is assumed that banks account for larger proportion of all commercial buildings, as gold mining does for non-ferrous metal mining.
This would mean that banks should have an impact of between six to eight times greater than that of gold. Having calculated a value of 54 million tonnes of CO2 produced by the gold mining industry, this would put the impact of the banking industry between 324 and 432 million tonnes of CO2, which is well within the same ballpark as the value of 380 million tonnes calculated by the UCB model.
ATMs
While ATMs reduce the need for bank branches, these machines have their own carbon footprint which isn’t insignificant.
It is estimated that each of the world’s 2,394,700 ATMs has an energy usage of 0.25 kWh (Roth, et al., 2002). This translates to a yearly energy use of 18.9 million GJ, or 3.2 million tonnes of CO2.
Summary
The environmental impact of the world’s financial access points are summarised in the table below
Using the rate of $100/MWh, the above energy use would equate to an annual energy bill of $63.8bn, or, roughly 2% of total revenue.
At 0.75 million tonnes of CO2 produced per year, Bitcoin has 99.8% fewer emissions than the banking system.
Check back next week for the concluding article in the series, in which Hass McCook undertakes a comparative summary of all three areas to evaluate the relative sustainability of the bitcoin network.
Bank image via Shutterstock
banksEnvironmentUnder the Microscope
Original author: Hass McCook