Your bank asked for a GHG inventory. Here's what they mean.
Green and sustainability-linked credit lines across the Western Balkans increasingly come with a condition attached: show us your emissions baseline. This page explains what credit officers actually need, and how to prepare it without guesswork.
Why lenders now ask for emissions data
Much of the green lending available to Balkan companies is funded or backed by international financial institutions, and those funds carry reporting obligations. A bank offering a green credit line must be able to demonstrate the climate performance of the portfolio behind it. That obligation flows downhill: the borrower is asked for a greenhouse-gas baseline at application, and often for annual updates over the life of the loan.
For the company, this lands as a paragraph in the loan documentation or an email from the relationship manager — usually with unfamiliar vocabulary and no instructions. The good news: what's being asked for is more standardised than it looks.
What credit review typically requires
The borrower data package
- A baseline GHG inventory — Scope 1 (fuel combustion, fleet, process emissions where relevant) and Scope 2 (purchased electricity and heat) for a defined twelve-month period.
- Methodology and factors — how the figures were calculated, with named, versioned emission factors appropriate to your country.
- Evidence behind the figures — energy invoices, fuel records and meter readings that the totals reconcile against.
- A report in English — credit and ESG teams reviewing the file frequently sit outside your country.
- Repeatability — the ability to produce the same inventory next year, on the same method, for annual covenant reporting.
Exact requirements vary by lender and by credit line — always work from your bank's actual request. What doesn't vary is the standard the data is held to: figures a reviewer can trace, on a method that holds still year over year.
Preparing without a sustainability department
A first inventory is not a consulting project if the records exist. Twelve months of electricity invoices, fuel purchases and fleet data, entered systematically and calculated with the right local factors, produce a defensible baseline. The effort scales with how scattered your records are — not with the size of the company. What matters is starting the monthly discipline now, so that by the time the bank asks for the annual update, the answer is an export rather than a project.
How Karbon360 fits in
Karbon360 is built to produce exactly the artifact a lender asks for: a GHG inventory with evidence behind every figure.
From invoices to inventory
Month-by-month guided entry for electricity, fuels, fleet and facilities — the structure that makes annual reporting repeatable instead of reconstructed.
Answers for credit review
Every figure stores the factor used, its version and a server-side recomputation — so "where does this number come from?" has a direct answer.
Reconciliation, shown plainly
Coverage and reconciliation are reported separately, and the report says clearly when something doesn't reconcile — before the reviewer finds it.
Frequently asked questions
Green and sustainability-linked credit lines — often IFI-funded — carry portfolio reporting obligations. Lenders need borrowers' GHG baselines to meet them, and increasingly ask for annual updates as a loan condition.
Most commonly a baseline Scope 1 and Scope 2 inventory for twelve months, with methodology, named emission factors, and evidence the totals reconcile against — plus a commitment to report annually. Work from your bank's specific request; the standard of traceability is the constant.
With twelve months of invoices and records available, it's primarily disciplined data entry with correct factors. The effort depends on how scattered the records are, not on company size.
Sometimes — until review questions arrive. Spreadsheets struggle with exactly what credit review probes: which factor produced a number, from which source, and whether totals reconcile with invoices. A traceable inventory answers those directly.
Application in progress?
Tell us what your bank requested and what records you have. We'll map the gap concretely — before the deadline does.
Talk to our team