Targets

Carbon Neutrality

*Relative to energy consumption and transportation emissions.

BMO achieved enterprise-wide carbon neutrality in August 2010. This milestone reflects our cumulative efforts in three areas: reduced energy consumption in our real estate facilities and for employees’ business-related travel; our investment in electricity from renewable sources; and our purchase of high-quality voluntary carbon credits to offset any remaining emissions.

Learn more about how we achieved that goal.

Since 2010, BMO has maintained carbon neutrality even as our operational footprint expands. In addition to our focus on reducing our emissions from facilities and transportation for business purposes, we have continued to invest in renewable energy and high-quality carbon offsets to mitigate emissions.  In fiscal 2016, BMO purchased:

1. 120,616 MWh of 100% renewable energy in the form of Renewable Energy Certificates in both Canada and the United States.  This amount is enough to mitigate the Scope 2 emissions resulting from electricity use in our facilities located in North America by 59,553 tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent.
2. 109,925 tonnes of high-quality carbon offset credits to mitigate our remaining enterprise emissions.  These offsets were sourced from four different projects in Canada. 

Learn more about the specific project details.

Emissions Reduction

We are committed to reducing the impact of our business operations on the environment. The largest contributing factor to that impact – approximately 87% – is the energy use in the real estate space we occupy. Business transportation by our employees and the fleet of vehicles we own account for most of the balance.

Since 2008, BMO has set and achieved three separate multi-year enterprise emissions reduction targets. The most recent ones are described as follows:

Learn more about our achievements.

In 2017 we established a new five-year target to reduce absolute carbon emissions by 15% compared to the fiscal 2016 baseline.

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Learn more about our achievement.

Water

In 2017, we established a five-year target to reduce water use intensity (m³ water /m² real estate) by 8% compared to the fiscal 2016 baseline.

Waste

Establishing a baseline for waste (landfill and recycling) across the wide variety of facilities that we occupy has been challenging, mainly due to the availability of reliable data. While we are making progress and have established baselines and targets at some of our larger facilities, we have not yet announced an enterprise-wide target.

Measurement and Accountability

We will measure progress against our targets annually, and report to BMO’s Sustainability Council.

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