BMO Reaches Goal to Match 100 Per Cent of Electricity Usage with Renewables
BMO has announced it has reached an important milestone in its commitment to a sustainable future: it has met its 2020 goal, announced last April, to match 100 per cent of its electricity usage with electricity produced from renewable sources across global operations.
This achievement includes investment in Renewal Energy Certificates from wind, solar and hydro projects in the regions where BMO operates, in quantities that match its 2019 global electricity consumption. The investment has enabled the generation of over 407,000 MWh of renewable energy.
This initiative aligns with BMO’s long-standing leadership on sustainability, which includes maintaining carbon neutrality in global operations since 2010 and meeting three successive multi-year enterprise emission reduction targets since 2008, matching 100 per cent of electricity usage in U.S. operations with renewables, and committing to mobilize $400 billion in sustainable finance by 2025.
“We’re excited to have reached this milestone so quickly and to be making such an important contribution in the shift to a sustainable future, a key part of BMO’s Purpose to Boldly Grow the Good in business and life,” said Simon Fish, General Counsel for BMO Financial Group and Chair of BMO’s Sustainability Council. “We continue to focus on reducing our own energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions with a robust energy management plan that includes both operational efficiency improvements and capital upgrades to our buildings.”
BMO has set a target to reduce its operational greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent by 2021 compared to its 2016 baseline and is on track to achieve this goal, reaching a 9 per cent reduction at the end of 2019. BMO’s 2019 operational efficiency data is available at https://corporate-responsibility.bmo.com/our-practices/environmental-stewardship/enviro-targets-performances/.
BMO has been recognized for sustainability by a number of organizations in 2020, including Corporate Knights and The Wall Street Journal.
