Sustainability transition is changing the role and function of banks, specially their products and services also in relation to stakeholders. Banks are one of the main actors supporting the transition to sustainable economy. The purpose of this study is to emphasise the role of world’s largest banks in that process. Banks are slowly responding to the new demand of sustainability and responsibility, and they try to align with it. The paper is based on an overview of the world’s five largest banks that employ corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting standards, together with detailed enumeration of pro-environmental activities included in the reports. The first section of this paper presents the most popular approaches to the problem at hand, as reported in professional literature. Section two presents the characteristics of the CSR actions in banks. The third section discusses the environmental actions of the biggest banks in Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reporting the most popular standard for reporting non-financial information. And the last part of the paper presents the conclusions resulting from the article. The research was conducted using a variety of sources, such as scientific articles, statistical data, CSR reports of the world’s largest banks, as well reporting principles and standard disclosures. The basic method used in the process of writing was a critical analysis of literature and reports concerning the CSR reporting standards, environmental responsibilities of different kinds of entities, as well as own observations based on special reports of banks. In the article, also the analysis of financial market data, induction method and comparison method have been used. The main conclusions of the analysis of the CSR reports disclosed by the world’s largest banks confirm all three of the theses presented in the article. The findings suggest that the banks under study can be regarded as environmentally responsible entities. Their reports and disclosures are produced according to the internationally recognized standards. There are also critical opinions about the standards for reporting environmental information, but the weaknesses of reporting these aspects do not undermine the benefits of using the GRI guidelines.

With the advent of corporate social responsibility, practical aspects of environmental responsibility have gained importance and recognition among both manufacturing and service enterprises, including financial services. This trend is also evidenced extensively in the literature. On the other hand, the literature reveals a significant gap in the research into the matter of environmental responsibility of banks in the light of their financial effectiveness. In addition, the European Union (EU) regulations require banking entities to provide reports of any activities related to protection of natural resources. Two important dilemmas arise in this context—how to measure the environmental involvement of the banking sector and how to relate this type of involvement to the sector’s financial effectiveness? We applied Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), linear ordering methods—standardized sum method and synthetic measure of development, Pearson’s and Spearman’s correlation coefficients, Student’s t and Mann-Whitney U tests and boxplots to measure environmental responsibility of banks and to examine the empirical relationship between environmental engagement and bank financial performance data. We also used analytical methods for the study of financial and non-financial reports of banks. We posited three research hypotheses related to measurement of environmental involvement of banks (ecologization) and to correlations between the sector’s financial effectiveness and its environmental involvement. The study does not confirm any direct influence of banks’ financial results upon the scale of their environmental involvement. Based on the above, the we also made an attempt at explaining the results and identifying directions of further research into the subject.

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The paper concerns the role of the banking sector in renewable energy financing in Poland. The main goal of the paper is to provide recommendations for the banking sector in Poland, which can be used in the process of financing RES. The main methods used in the paper are the thorough analysis of the solutions used to finance RES in different countries and multivariate analysis of options presented on the ordinal scale. The first finding is the answer to the question of which financial instruments used by banks are the most effective in the financing of RES. It is based on the prepared ranking of different instruments used by banks in the process of renewable energy financing, by assessing the structure and value of required financing for renewable energy based on future scenarios. The second finding in the paper is the set of recommendations for the banking sector and policymakers as to financing renewable energy sources in Poland. The main conclusion is that renewable energy financing through the instruments available in the banking sector is efficient and is characterized by relatively low risk.

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