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Despite their integration into coalitions aimed at achieving carbon neutrality, the largest financial institutions continue to finance new oil and gas projects, denounces a group of NGOs in a new study.
The largest financial institutions that have joined coalitions aiming to achieve carbon neutrality and compliance with the Paris Agreement continue to finance companies that launch new oil and gas projects, denounce nine NGOs in a study published on Tuesday 17 January.
About 550 companies, weighing 150 trillion dollars in assets, or 40% of the global total, are members of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (Gfanz), itself divided into seven sectoral alliances bringing together, for example, banks, insurers or asset managers.
“Between the date each bank joined the alliance and August 2022, the 56 largest members of the Carbon Neutral Banking Alliance (NZBA) provided loans and bond or equity issues 269 billion dollars to 102 major fossil fuel developers”, underlines in their study the NGOs Reclaim Finance, 350.org, BankTrack, Rainforest Action Network, Recommon, Urgewald, Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club and Stand Earth.
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The American Citigroup in the viewfinder
In the lead is the American group Citigroup, with 30.5 billion dollars in financing, followed by Bank of America (22.8 billion) and the Japanese MUFG (22.7 billion).
French banks BNP ParibasSociété Générale and Crédit Agricole come in 15th, 16th and 17th positions respectively, with 6 to 7 billion dollars in financing.
On the asset manager side, 58 of the alliance’s largest members held at least $847 billion in stocks and bonds in 201 fossil fuel developers, the study found.
The problem is that “there is now an agreement (that there) is no place in a +1.5 degree scenario (by 2100 compared to the pre-industrial period, editor’s note) for new fossil fuel supplies,” said Paddy McCully, author of the study and analyst for Reclaim Finance, in a press briefing.
Regularly singled out for their support for the oil and gas sector, financial players often claim that their financing contributes to the energy transition of this sector, and that they finance the world as it is.
With AFP