News of RAN’s Shorting the Climate report broke on June 14th with an article in the Financial Times. The Times noted:
Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase have delivered billions of dollars in financing for coal, oil and gas companies that is “deeply at odds” with the goals of the Paris climate change accord, a new study claims.
The article further elaborated:
Citigroup was calculated to have supplied $24bn for large coal power plant operators, making it the largest supporter in this category. Deutsche Bank was the top financer of big coal miners, delivering nearly $7bn between 2013 and 2015, according to the study’s assessment of publicly available financial filings.
JPMorgan Chase was ranked the largest financer of so-called “extreme oil”, financing an estimated $38bn for the biggest owners of untapped reserves in ultra-deep offshore fields, the Arctic or tar sands.
Dozens of other large banks named in the study have also “engaged in fossil fuel financing practices that are deeply at odds with the global climate agreement” that nearly 200 countries reached at the December COP21 meeting in Paris, the report says.
Providing some context, the article noted:
The Paris accord aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep global temperature rises well below 2C from pre-industrial times. Burning fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — is one of the largest drivers of emissions.
Several banks publicly committed to reducing their support for some coal ventures before and after the Paris meeting….
These decisions were welcome, said a co-author of the study, Amanda Starbuck of the Rainforest Action Network.
But large banks had to do more to ensure the Paris accord’s goals were met, she said. “This report is saying ‘wake up, you need to look across the board here’.
Read the Full Article (requires login)
