News

RBC is funding some seriously damaging fossil fuel projects. They’re trampling on Wet’suwet’en and Ojibwe land (among others). They’ve invested C$208 billion into fossil fuels since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed.

It’s hypocrisy. Out in the open. For everyone to see.

HSBC and Standard Chartered are both in the Net Zero Banking Alliance – a group of banks committed to reducing their fossil fuel investments.

Citibank, the global fossil fuel industry’s second biggest funder, is responding to pressure from thousands of us and making moves on climate. It’s now ahead of other banks like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs on climate.

Goldman Sachs just released updated policies to try and tackle their investments in dirty fossil fuel projects. And they’re riddled with loopholes. They don’t outline anything to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions and they’re massaging the numbers to make it look good (by using ‘intensity’ rather than ‘absolute’ targets).

The Royal Bank of Canada are pouring millions of dollars into Coastal Gas Link, a huge dirty pipeline set to be built right through the middle of sacred land belonging to the Wet’suwet’en Land Defenders.

This is huge. Some of the biggest banks and oil companies in the world are backing the Cambo oil field which is set to extract 170 million barrels of oil over 25 years, and 53.5 billion cubic feet of gas.

The UK government keep saying they want to lead the way on climate change. And yet here they are, handing over £14bn in tax-payer’s money in tax -breaks to massive oil and gas companies.

President Biden has announced Jerome Powell for a second term as Chair of the Federal Reserve. And that’s bad news for the climate. The Federal Reserve is the US’s central bank.

Coming out of COP26, several banks announced commitment to net-zero by 2050. They sound good, but unfortunately the announcements left enough wiggle room for many banks to continue “business as usual.” Years of people power leading to COP resulted in some of the world’s largest financial institutions finally acknowledging their outsize role in fueling climate change.

HSBC are part of the net zero banking alliance (NZBA) – a group of banks committing to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. But they’re showing their true colours.

Standard Chartered is one of the banks committing to net-zero by 2050. And recently they’re flexing their green credentials by laying out more strategy for how to reach that target – which will be put to a vote to shareholders at the bank’s 2022 AGM.

And today, Carney is announcing that GFANZ now has $130 trillion dollars committed to net zero. But these huge commitments are a mile wide and an inch deep.

Many of the world’s worst fossil fuel financiers are in GFANZ.

Rishi Sunak just announced plans to make British or UK-listed financial companies publish plans on how they will transition to net zero. He’s setting up an independent task force to define what a proper transition looks like.

Central banks help to set the rules for how the economy works. And no central banks are more important than those of the G20 countries, who are responsible for the vast majority of global emissions.