Marking Earth Week.

This week, Citi celebrates Earth Week, and as part of our program we hosted a webinar by Chris Coulter from GlobeScan, a research and polling firm. Chris gave a presentation to our employees around the world on global environmental trends. Some of the key points:

• People polled in 14 different countries named climate change as one of the most pressing global problems, second only to economic development.
• Sustainability experts point to water and resource depletion as the most important environmental problems across the world today.
• Across populations in 17 countries around the world, less than half believe that the lifestyle in their country is sustainable for future generations.

At Citi, we look for ways to make our company's operational footprint more environmentally sustainable, while also engaging with our clients to encourage best practices. Among our achievements:

• Citi was the first major bank to set goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and water use. (Last year, we reduced our GHG emissions by 6.4%.)
• Citi was a lead developer of the Equator Principles, a set of environmental and social guidelines for project finance that have now been adopted by 71 banks worldwide. In 2010, Citi was elected Chair of the Equator Principles Association and still serves in that role.
• In 2007, we announced our industry-leading $50 billion, 10-year climate initiative. We are already more than halfway to that goal, having committed $30 billion so far to climate-positive projects and financings. One recent example is the Shepherds Flat Wind Project in Oregon, a $1.4 billion structured finance deal which, when built, will be the largest wind farm in the world, generating enough energy to power 200,000 homes and creating hundreds of "green-collar" jobs.

Citi finances economic development in communities and countries around the world. We understand that with that economic development come real environmental and social complexities, which require deep understanding, capacity, and dedication to work through and resolve. Whether it is by greening our facilities, talking to our clients about tough issues, or pushing forward important projects that accelerate a conversion to renewable power sources, such as wind, Citi is committed to sustainability as a central tenet of Responsible Finance.

In the period leading up to Earth Week, many Citi facilities also took an active stand to raise awareness about climate change, going dark for Earth Hour. At the appointed local time, 8:30PM on Saturday, March 26, we powered down 736 Citi buildings in 63 countries -- from Australia to Zambia and including New York, London, Hong Kong and Sao Paolo.

These before-and-after photos of Citibank Center and Citibank Tower in Makati City, Philippines illustrate the difference that lights-out makes. Our regional City Realty Services managers often compete to see whose region will have the most facilities participating. At Citi, we see it as a fun way to show our commitment to something that we work on every day -- reducing our impact on the environment.