As a critical function to the economy, banks pump blood, aka money, to where it’s needed. This results in financed emissions, which commonly accounts for more than 95% of the average bank’s overall emissions. By addressing financed emissions, banks can have substantial reductions in their own carbon footprint and drive the transition to a low-carbon economy at the same time.

Recognising this impactful opportunity, David Handelman pivoted his rather successful banking career in communications and product management to work directly on climate. It was a journey of six years with setbacks, part-time studying and sacrifices. But his perseverance was rewarded by eventually landing on his dream job, Senior Manager for Financed Emissions, in the same bank, combining his seasoned expertise and new credentials in carbon management.

Beyond his concern for environmental issues, David is driven by love for his daughter. Nonetheless, a climate-focused position in a bank’s already demanding working environment may provoke anxiety. David suggests setting clear boundaries while celebrating progress in the field. To encourage optimism and actions, he recommends Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone and Drawdown edited by Paul Hawken.

Listen to the podcast or read the transcript below.

Yongsi: Can you tell us what your job involves? It might be helpful to give us a bit of background information about financed emissions.

David: Happy to do that. First off, I'll say that today I'm speaking on my own behalf. All of my thoughts and reflections are my own and not those of my employer, which is TD Bank.

I work on financed emissions. For those who are familiar with greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and the GHG Protocol, it’s a bank's Scope 3 emissions, including the emissions resulting from the financing that the bank does. Obviously banks lend to other companies in the economy. There's a formula to attribute some of our clients' emissions back to the bank. That's called financed emissions.

In a nutshell, the work that I do is to assess our lending and financing portfolio where we can set targets to reduce our financed emissions. We are a member of the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZDA), a group convened by the United Nations Environment Program for Financial Institutions, which includes aligning to a 1.5 °C scenario. So we're looking to set targets for our financed emissions to limit warming to 1.5°C. It's a fairly new field, nuanced and complex. New methodologies are being developed on an ongoing basis.

Yongsi: You mentioned financed emissions is part of the Scope 3 emissions of a bank. For the audience who are not so familiar, emissions scopes is a system for calculating an organisation's GHG emissions. For a bank, Scope 1 comes from things directly controlled by the bank. For example, its office buildings. Scope 2 is… David, do you want to tell us about Scope 2?

David: The Scope 2 would be mostly from the electricity that we purchase for our operations along with Scope 1. Depending on the electricity grid where we're operating, there's the emissions for generating the electricity that we use.

Scope 3 emissions is everything else in the upstream, supply chain and downstream, including use of products. For a bank, our product is capital or money and financing. Also, financing and investments is one of the categories of Scope 3 emissions. For banks, because we finance so much of the economy including carbon intensive sectors, that's where the majority of our emissions are.

Yongsi: What is your day-to-day work life like?

David: One of the amazing things of working in this field is, as I mentioned, it's rapidly changing and evolving. We get involved, look at and do analysis of different sectors of the economy.

No two days are exactly the same. I've learned a lot about the energy sector, agriculture, automotive and aviation. Depending on the sector we're investigating, I get to learn more about those and bring some of the knowledge I already have from a climate change perspective. Then we look at a number of different initiatives. We work with people from across the bank to try and support their efforts. We inform conversations with clients and investor groups. All things decarbonisation falls on the team that I'm on.

We really do a lot of different things. But a big part is to work with and support other people at the bank, including interacting with people and helping to inform their decisions, trying to figure out the best course of action for our business and aligning to a 1.5°C scenario. It's very interesting work. It keeps us busy. It's evolving. Lots of stuff to learn. I really enjoy it.

Yongsi: It sounds exciting and challenging at the same time. Do you work with any industry standards or any carbon accounting frameworks?

David: Yes, we do annual climate disclosures for the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). That's a framework for the report that we put out each year.

For financed emissions, there are a couple of main methodologies, but one that's approved by the GHG Protocol is the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF). That's working on developing the standard methodologies for accounting financed emissions. We’re a member of PCAF. We follow that methodology and sometimes participate in working groups as they look to evolve it or add new methods for new asset classes.

Yongsi: As a small recap, your role as a Financed Emissions Manager focuses on reducing your bank's carbon footprints from the projects that the bank financed. You do it by engaging with different teams within the organisation and following a framework called PCAF. What kind of skills do you think are important in order to do your job well?

David: Being a good communicator is a very important skill, because we support so many different stakeholders internally at the bank. We have a lot of meetings. We're working to try and understand their objectives. We're also trying to explain concepts to them and at times influence them to come along on our journey as we work on financed emissions. There's a whole process to that. It’s essential to be able to communicate and listen well, answer any questions or concerns that they may have, and to influence them at times as needed.

Along with that, because there's a lot of interest in climate change, we are also constantly making presentations and decks to help inform our stakeholders about what we're doing and what our plans are and to get approvals. Definitely a big element of creating nice decks or slides.

From there, banks are big institutions. There's certainly a skill at navigating the different channels within the bank. We have a lot of risk management processes, legal and regulatory processes. To get things approved to disclose to the public and to get things done, there's a certain skill you develop over time in navigating the channels at the bank and understanding how to get things done.

For our area, as we dive into different sectors, it’s also helpful to have some expertise about climate change, different sectors and what drives the emissions in those sectors and what decarbonization pathways look like. That's knowledge you can learn before or on the job, not necessarily a skill. There's so much to know. Not everyone knows everything, obviously. But certainly some background knowledge definitely helps for this position, both on the climate side and on the banking and financial industry side. We work with different businesses from business banking. Those wholesale banking and capital markets were new which I've learned about over the last few years.

Yongsi: Which part of your job do you like the most?

David: I really enjoy what I'm doing. I went through a programme called MSc Carbon Management. It was an interdisciplinary programme all about climate change. My goal was to try and have an impact as much as possible on climate change mitigation. I did that after 15 plus years working at the bank.

For me, the job that I have now really brings those two worlds together. I feel working on financed emissions is really where the rubber hits the road - where the traction and the impact happens on the biggest scale, on how banks finance the economy and the emissions that result. I also want to affect change from the inside, working within the system with a balanced approach and making a difference from within the system. It's personally very fulfilling. It's impactful. We've just gotten the ball rolling over the last year or two. In time, we'll see more and more impact which is very exciting. It's constantly evolving.

I feel very lucky because I have what would be my dream job, bringing skills, education, experience together.

Yongsi: It's great that you get to sort of recycle your experience and skills that you're already good at. But were there any trade-offs or challenges when you tried to change into this role that's more focused on sustainability?

David: Yeah, and I will say it was not without a lot of hard work and sacrifice. I did a lot of volunteering on the side working on environmental issues, but I decided at one point when my daughter was very young that I wanted to work full time on environmental issues and climate change. I was starting to realise it was one of the most critical issues as I read and learned more about it. So I decided to pivot my career to work in climate change. It took quite a while. It wasn't probably for six or seven years until I was actually able to do that.

I had a fairly successful career working in other areas of the bank. I was hoping to leverage that to get on to the environment team. But in the end that didn't work. I had applied and didn't succeed. So I decided I would go back to school to get more credentials to help me change my career. Ideally at the bank. But if need be, I'd pivot and leave the financial sector or go somewhere else to try and work full time on climate change.

In 2020, the bank announced a goal of net zero and they needed to hire additional staff, so I applied again. This was probably three years after the first time I applied. I was not successful, but they said they had a lower level job which I might be interested in. I could apply for that and maybe I could get that. For me working in the field was more important than the level or even the salary. I was successful in that job posting and joined the team as a manager. I was a senior manager. I moved down to a manager level and then I worked on the environment team, moved to the decarbonization team, focusing on climate change. After about two years on the team, I got promoted again to senior manager. That was just close to a year ago.

Ultimately to get on the team, it was quite a journey. I had applied and been declined three times or so. I went to school and did a master's over three years part-time to get the credentials to enable me to do it. But it's what I wanted. I was willing to persist and do whatever it took to get there.

I think that's an important message for Greensider listeners. There's so much going on in the field of climate change and now nature and biodiversity space. Many organisations and corporations are doing more and more work on this space. They need people and expertise.

If people want to work in that field, commit themselves to it and persist. Don't let rejections stop them. Keep a positive attitude and keep learning. They will eventually get there because the world needs them. Corporations and other organisations need smart, passionate and knowledgeable people. Just continue to work and try, you will get there. You will be glad you did in the end like I am.

Yongsi: What a great message, David! I want to add another moral of your story is that more opportunities are popping up in the field of nature and biodiversity. As you can see, just within TD Bank, things have evolved within a few years.

David: Yep, for sure. Not just nature and biodiversity. There's a number of climate regulations for disclosures. Companies that will need to report their emissions or have to disclose their transition plans need staff to help them meet targets.There will continue to be roles in climate over the coming years. Definitely also in nature and biodiversity which is really growing in terms of people working on it. It’s desperately needed by the planet in both crises.

Yongsi: Exactly. You’ve worked in many different roles in the same bank before pivoting your career. How did those experiences benefit your current work?

David: Each role that I've had has contributed and helps me today. In data and analytics - as we're estimating our greenhouse gas emissions, a lot of data work. That experience has helped me understand how some of the coding and data analysis work. When I work with our data team - it's a separate team. I'm more on the strategy side and we have a data team - I can speak their language or understand what they're saying when they're talking about data. When I was a product manager, working again on the strategy for products, also a lot of communication and influence and navigating the channels at the bank - two of the key skills for my current role. I did that for over five years. That was a big help for this role.

I've always had the attitude that I like working in jobs where I enjoy it and where it provides me the opportunity to learn more. I love to learn and grow. If you enjoy what you're doing, you'll be more engaged. Therefore you'll want to work harder and you'll be more successful and you'll be having more fun. It's a positive experience that snowballs. That's the case for this role when I moved down. I knew I would enjoy it more. It was more important to me than pay or level or anything. I think doing what you love is one of the most important things. Gather those new skills as you do it. It will only help you in the future.

Yongsi: Research has shown that money doesn't necessarily buy happiness. I suppose you're one example. What else motivates you?

David: For me, becoming a parent. My daughter is now 13, but when she was young and just born, I remember love, lots of love - more love than I think I had ever felt before and a sense of responsibility for this tiny human being that you helped bring into the world. You're charged with taking care of her and keeping her health healthy and safe and learning and growing. At the same time, the IPCC reports and news is getting worse and worse about climate change. I really need to do right by my daughter. I need to try and do as much as I can to mitigate climate change. It became this strong sense. That's when I made that commitment to pivot. I'm glad that I did - I'm not sure what more to say.

I am an optimist. I see a lot of amazing things going on. Obviously there's science telling us it's an urgent crisis and we need big actions very quickly. I don't know how it will all play out. I think we can get as much done as we need to as fast as we need to. I sometimes joke, saying that many years from now when I'm old and on my deathbed, I can look my daughter in the eye and say I’ve tried. In the second half of my career, I really focused on trying to fight climate change and I did what I could.

Yongsi: She can listen to this podcast as proof.

David: Yes. She knows. She’s helped support me on my journey to try and get into the work and help me celebrate when I did.

Yongsi: You're not alone to be hopeful about the future. One of our Carbon Management alumni, Hannah Ritchie, recently published the book Not the End of the World. In the book, she gave evidence that we could be the first generation in human history to achieve sustainability, meaning we're able to meet the needs of the current generation without sacrificing those of the future generations, including your daughter's generations. We're working on it!

David: Yeah, working on it! Hopefully we avoid tipping points or other issues. But I am hopeful for the future.

Yongsi: We know that a career in finance is usually fast paced, challenging and competitive. On the other hand, your current role is dealing with emission data all the time, and it's not uncommon to get anxious about the climate situation. How do you feel about your stress level since you stepped into this crossroad between climate and finance?

David: To me, I was very busy in my roles before I moved to an environmental job. I'm still very busy now. But for me, because I'm more invested and engaged and fulfilled by it, it's less stressful. One thing to be aware of is that it can be tough when you're working on climate change or nature and biodiversity. As you read the science, it can be bleak and upsetting or anxiety inducing. When you add that on top of the stress of working, for some people that becomes an issue. It's something you need to be aware of and to manage when you work in the field.

For me, working in the field helps me overcome that anxiety. I'm going to do my best to try and have an impact. I will focus on the things that I can control and do it in my work. Then I'll put a fence or a stop on the other anxiety that might ensue and say, I'm not going to worry about that because I'm doing everything I can in my job from nine to five every single day. That's how I've dealt with that personally. But it's different for everyone.

Yongsi: That's great advice to set your boundaries so you don't get overwhelmed. Finally, before we wrap up, do you have any recommendations for our sustainability book club?

David: Yes. Keeping on this same theme, there's one book called Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're In Without Going Crazy. It's by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. It’s very similar to what we said about being hopeful and taking action is a way to not go crazy in the mess that we're in. I really like that sort of framing. It's similar to what I just described about how I look at it and try to have an impact with my work, which keeps me hopeful and happy.

I also really love the book Drawdown. Some of the listeners might be familiar with it. The book highlights the top hundred things we can do to draw down carbon from the atmosphere. It’s like an encyclopaedia and very well researched. There's a large team that researches it. They include information about any tactic or lever that we could use to decarbonize. There's information about the potential impacts and the costs. It's a really great book.

Although since I've worked in the field, I've shifted away from climate related reading. In the beginning, I'd be working on it all day, reading about climate stuff at night, listening to podcasts related to climate. For me, it was a lot, almost too much. I really like history. I sometimes listen to history podcasts and read some fictional books and mix them up, so it's not all climate 24/7.