2024-02-14 13:27:31
ING slammed Milieudefensie in a sweet tone. In a letter full of pleasantries, the bank explains why the environmental organization would make a mistake by taking the bank to court.
While Milieudefensie circulates images online of a sad-looking lion, the ING logo, with texts such as ‘ING is the banker of the climate crisis, that lion looks ugly in his shirt’, the bank explains in the letter what the bank does in the field of climate policy. ING mapped the climate data of the two thousand largest customers, according to the letter signed by CEO Steven van Rijswijk.
The bank works with the ‘science-based’ program Terra, intended to align customer policies with the goals of the Paris climate agreement, so that emissions are ‘net zero’ by 2050. ING wants to reduce emissions from its own buildings and data centers by 70 percent by 2030. The bank promises to ‘completely’ exit oil and gas activities by 2040.
Inspiring conversations
“It is clear that we agree on the importance of tackling climate change as quickly as possible and that we and other banks play a role in this,” ING said. The financier says it would like to continue discussions with Milieudefensie, which the bank calls ‘inspiring’ in the letter.
This is not obvious, because Milieudefensie chooses to confront ING in court. According to the environmental organization, the bank must collect all CO2emissions, including those arising from financed customers and projects, are almost halved by 2030 to comply with ‘Paris’. ING calls this nonsensical and unfeasible for several reasons. Disposing of interests in oil and gas so quickly would be impractical, because 80 percent of the world economy runs on gas, oil and coal. ING believes that sending away existing fossil customers is irresponsible.
ING does state that for a few years there have been no more loans for new oil and gas drilling and that the rest of the fossil energy interests (regarding 15 billion euros in 2022) will be phased out towards 2040. This would be in line with the outcome of the UN climate summit in Dubai, where 194 countries agreed that the world must ‘move away from’ fossil energy to meet 2050 targets.
Heat pumps
ING is trying to dispel the idea that reducing greenhouse gases as a result of financing is always good for the climate. “A good example of this is the heat pump.” If the bank invests money in a company that produces heat pumps, this will lead to sustainable gas-free heating in homes and companies.
But the CO2-footprint of the ING portfolio becomes dirtier if you attribute the greenhouse gases from the heat pump factory to the bank – as Milieudefensie does. “The transition requires major investments in new technologies. If we finance these, our total financed emissions would […] being able to move up when it is the right thing to do.”
The fact that ING addressed the mild, cheerful letter to the management of Milieudefensie says little regarding the tone that the bank’s lawyers will adopt in court. Shell, once morest which Milieudefensie won a climate case in the first instance, also wrote answers full of pleasantries. But the Shell lawyers were fierce before the judge, arguing that Milieudefensie is spreading nonsense, should not interfere with Shell and that Shell would not be bound by the political Paris agreement.
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Milieudefensie has won the climate case once morest Shell. Now the action group is taking ‘the largest financier of the climate crisis’ to court.
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