The carbon footprint of the Riksbank’s foreign exchange reserves is 298,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per billion dollars of GDP on 31 March 2022 (see Figure 5). The carbon footprint is calculated for the foreign exchange reserves’ holdings of bonds issued by governments and regions, which together account for more than 93 per cent of the market value of the foreign exchange reserves. The remaining 7 per cent consists of bonds issued by international organisations and state-guaranteed organisations, as well as holdings in bank accounts. For these holdings, either data on greenhouse gas emissions are not available or reporting is not yet sufficiently developed. Consequently, these holdings are not included in the calculations. The carbon footprint of the foreign exchange reserves must therefore be interpreted with a certain degree of caution, since the holdings included have a higher weight in the calculation than if the total holdings in the foreign exchange reserves had been included.

If, instead, we had estimated the carbon intensity of the holdings for which we do not have data with the respective country's carbon intensity, the carbon footprint of the foreign exchange reserves would have been 296,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per billion dollars of GDP on 31 March 2022, that is to say, 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per billion dollars of GDP lower. The decrease in the footprint is mainly due to the share of assets in euros^[23] For the euro assets, the carbon intensity for Germany is used as an approximation. (which have a lower carbon intensity) increasing, while the share of assets in US dollars (with a relatively higher intensity) is decreasing (see Figure 4).

Figure 5. The carbon footprint of the foreign exchange reserves on 31 March 2022 Tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents emitted per billion dollars of GDP in 2019