A report issued by Mnakh Studies and Research Company has shown that the nine banks listed on Boursa Kuwait reduced their operational greenhouse gas emissions by 6.2 per cent over a single year, falling from 123.5 thousand tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in 2024 to 115.8 thousand tonnes in 2025 — an absolute reduction of 7,701 tonnes.
The report, which drew on the banks' published sustainability reports for both years under the Mnakh Sustainability Methodology, covered all nine banks and concluded that six of them achieved genuine reductions in their operational emissions — those arising from direct combustion and purchased electricity, which constitute the only metric permitting fair comparison between banks, as their boundaries are confined to facilities and vehicle fleets.
National Bank of Kuwait led the ranking for absolute reduction at 3,510 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, equal to 45.6 per cent of the entire sector's total reduction, while Warba Bank recorded the largest proportional reduction at 49.4 per cent, followed by Commercial Bank of Kuwait at 14.7 per cent. Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait, Kuwait International Bank, Kuwait Finance House and Gulf Bank posted decreases ranging between 2.1 and 9.4 per cent, while Boubyan Bank remained effectively stable. Burgan Bank recorded an increase of 68.8 per cent, which the report attributed most probably to an expansion in accounting boundaries rather than to any deterioration in operational performance.
Total Footprint Declines Despite Wider Measurement Scope
The sector's total disclosed carbon footprint stood at 139.9 thousand tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in 2025, a decline of 2 per cent on the previous year. The report noted, however, that this net decline came in below the operational reduction because the banks simultaneously expanded what they measure of their value chain emissions by 25.6 per cent, rising from 19.2 thousand to 24.1 thousand tonnes of CO₂ equivalent.
The report described this combined outcome as a rare one, in which better operational performance, a wider measurement scope and a lower headline figure converged at the same time. It attributed the broadening of measurement to Gulf Bank's completion of its first comprehensive value chain emissions inventory, moving from 2.5 tonnes to 5,728 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, to Kuwait International Bank's extension of its coverage to four categories, and to further expansion by Burgan Bank, which already held the widest coverage in the sector.
The share of value chain emissions within the total footprint rose from 13.5 to 17.2 per cent between the two years, against a decline in the share of operational emissions from 86.5 to 82.8 per cent — an indication of the sector's transition from measurement confined to facilities towards measurement extending across the value chain.
Purchased Electricity Accounts for 72 Per Cent of the Footprint
The report revealed that purchased electricity accounts for 101.2 thousand tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, or 72.4 per cent of the sector's total footprint, and that it alone exceeds 70 per cent of emissions at six of the nine banks, reaching 99.8 per cent at Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait and 92.3 per cent at National Bank of Kuwait.
By contrast, the report showed that the results of the transition to renewable energy remain marginal against the scale of this mass. Commercial Bank of Kuwait disclosed the generation of 162,887 kilowatt-hours of solar energy, avoiding 82.6 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent; Warba Bank disclosed 164.7 tonnes avoided; and Boubyan Bank disclosed 34.2 tonnes through renewable energy contracts for its United Kingdom arm. The combined total avoided by the three banks does not exceed 282 tonnes — less than three parts per thousand of the sector's total electricity emissions.
On this point the report reached a structural conclusion: the ceiling on what banks can achieve individually remains limited so long as the national electricity grid relies almost entirely on fossil fuels, and any substantial reduction in the banking sector's emissions — and in those of any Kuwaiti services sector — depends on a transformation in the national power generation mix far more than it depends on installing solar panels on branch rooftops.
Disclosure Quality Improves as the Gap Between Banks Narrows
The sector's score under the emissions and climate change criterion rose from 5.6 to 6.8 out of ten, after five banks improved their scores, led by Kuwait Finance House and Kuwait International Bank with four points each, followed by Gulf Bank with three points.
The report considered the most significant indicator in this respect to be the narrowing of the gap between the strongest and weakest banks from 7.5 points in 2024 to 4 points in 2025, noting that the major improvements came from banks previously in the lower ranks rather than from the leaders — meaning the sector is converging towards a unified disclosure standard rather than seeing its disparities widen.
National Bank of Kuwait led the disclosure quality ranking with nine points out of ten, followed by Boubyan Bank with eight points, then Burgan Bank and Kuwait Finance House with seven and a half points each.
The report nonetheless described external verification as the weakest link in the disclosure chain, with only two of the nine banks subjecting their reports to external verification, while a single bank — National Bank of Kuwait — submitted its emissions inventory specifically to independent verification by a specialist body in accordance with the international standard ISO 14064-3. Quantified reduction targets are held by five banks, most notably Kuwait Finance House's pathway towards carbon neutrality in 2060, Gulf Bank's 2030 targets distributed across each scope, and Boubyan Bank's strategy extending to 2029.
Financed Emissions Remain the Largest Gap
The report observed that none of the nine banks has published an absolute figure for its financed emissions — those arising from lending and investment portfolios, a category that exceeds operational emissions many times over in the banking sector globally. On that basis it concluded that the figure of 139.9 thousand tonnes represents the visible operational portion of the sector's actual carbon impact, not its complete footprint.
The file has nonetheless begun to move, according to the report. Burgan Bank has conducted a baseline year assessment of its financed emissions covering approximately 40 per cent of its portfolio under the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials standard, and National Bank of Kuwait has joined the same initiative as the first Kuwaiti bank, currently at the baseline year calculation stage, while Boubyan Bank is developing its methodology and Warba Bank plans to adopt it.
Commenting on the findings, Mnakh Studies and Research Company said that the picture drawn by two years of data differs from that of a single year, and that the sector is not merely disclosing but genuinely reducing while simultaneously widening the scope of what it measures. It added that the next stage of credibility will not be measured by the number of scopes disclosed, but by three matters: harmonising accounting boundaries across banks, expanding independent external verification, and completing the calculation of financed emissions — and that on all three fronts, the journey has only just begun.
