Sustainable Steel Principles

In September 2022, six top lenders to the global steel sector — Citi, Crédit Agricole CIB, ING, Societe Generale, Standard Chartered and UniCredit — announced the signing of the Sustainable STEEL Principles (SSP), the first Climate-Aligned Finance (CAF) agreement for lenders to the steel industry. The SSP provides a methodology for banks to measure and report the emissions associated with their loan portfolios compared to net-zero emissions pathways. In doing so, the framework informs banks of how emissions-intensive their steel loans are relative to the net-zero pathway needed to stay within the planet’s remaining carbon budget.