What is PCAF and Why Should Banks Care?

The Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) is a global initiative that provides a standardized methodology for financial institutions to measure and disclose the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with their loans and investments, commonly referred to as financed emissions.

PCAF has rapidly become the industry standard for financed emissions accounting. As of 2025, over 600 financial institutions worldwide are PCAF signatories, including major banks, asset managers, and insurers. PCAF’s methodologies are also aligned with key regulatory frameworks and initiatives, such as the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), and the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) for financial institutions.

The need for robust financed emissions accounting is urgent. PCAF estimates that banks have poured over US$4.6 trillion into fossil fuel financing over the past decade. Meanwhile, data from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) shows that financed emissions can be more than 700 times larger than a bank’s own operational emissions. For financial institutions, accurately measuring these emissions is a crucial first step to assess climate related risks and begin aligning portfolios with long term climate objectives.

The Interpretation Gap: Why Financed Emissions Are Still Underused

Calculating financed emissions is just the beginning. Financial institutions face a deeper challenge: How do I interpret these results and turn them into actionable insights?

Several factors contribute to this difficulty. First, the big volume and complexity of data can be overwhelming. Emissions must be allocated across thousands of instruments, borrowers, sectors, and asset classes, making it difficult to see the bigger picture and identify specific priorities.

Second, insights often remain hidden in static documents or spreadsheets. Without intuitive tools or structured reporting formats, navigating the results becomes a manual, time consuming task that slows down strategic follow up.

Even when data is available, a lack of granularity makes it hard to connect emissions to specific exposures or decisions. As a result, the information remains too high level to inform meaningful analysis.

Finally, there is a persistent actionability gap. For many institutions, it is simply unclear how to translate financed emissions data into concrete steps for portfolio strategy, client engagement, or climate target setting.

This often leads to a familiar cycle: the PCAF assessment is completed, the report is submitted, and the results sit untouched until the next reporting deadline.

Unlocking Value with Atlas PCAF Analytics

To help address these challenges, Atlas launches a PCAF Analytics Dashboard: an interactive and detailed tool built to support deeper analysis of financed emissions.

Some of the key features are:

Dynamic Exploration:Drill down from portfolio level figures to granular emissions sources by sector, borrower, region, or asset class.

Data Quality Visibility: Understand the distribution of PCAF data quality scores across the portfolio to identify where methodological improvements may be needed.

Emissions Intensity Analysis: Compare absolute financed emissions with intensity metrics (e.g. emissions per invested amount) to assess relative emissions performance.

Top Emitters Identification: Identify high emitting positions both at portfolio level and within each asset class to inform internal reviews or engagement focus.

Granular Slicing: Segment and analyze results by relevant dimensions such as region, sector, or property type, and explore emissions at the investment level.

Benchmarking Across Institutions: A powerful new capability of the PCAF Analytics Dashboard allows financial institutions to benchmark their financed emissions across different asset classes against industry peers.

This feature provides comparative insights that help contextualize performance, identify outliers, and highlight areas for improvement. Institutions can see how their emissions intensities stack up against others in the market, offering a more informed perspective on where they stand and where to focus decarbonization efforts.

Emissions Over Time: Track how financed emissions change year over year to inform trend analysis and internal progress tracking.

What You Can Do with PCAF Analytics

By providing more accessible and structured insights, the dashboard helps financial institutions move beyond reporting and toward action.

It enables teams to focus engagement efforts on borrowers, sectors, or instruments that contribute most to the portfolio’s financed emissions. With enhanced granularity, institutions can support internal reviews, identifying high emitting or carbon intensive exposures and monitoring their progress over time.

The dashboard also strengthens internal reporting workflows, supplying the breakdowns and analysis needed to inform investment teams, risk managers, and sustainability leads alike. Most importantly, it lays the groundwork for strategy, helping users build a foundation for climate action by identifying patterns, gaps, and opportunities that can inform target setting, scenario planning, and broader portfolio alignment efforts.

Financed emissions reporting shouldn’t be a black box. With the launch of our PCAF Analytics Dashboard, Atlas is helping banks and financial institutions transform raw data into powerful insight so that sustainability reporting becomes a solid foundation for climate action, not just a compliance checkbox.

If you are ready to turn your financed emissions analysis into a strategic advantage, get in touch with our team or explore the new dashboard in your Atlas account today.