London | May 5th 2020
Two of Europe’s leading investors in fossil fuel companies are holding their online AGMs in London this week. As revealed in the latest Rainforest Action Network report "Banking on Climate Change", Standard Chartered has financed coal, oil & gas companies with $24 billion since the Paris Agreement. Barclays’ financing of fossil fuel companies since 2016 exceeds a whopping $118 billion. [1] With COP26 scheduled to take place in Glasgow, the world will be paying close attention to how the UK banks fix their fossil faults.
Barclays, Europe’s leading fossil bank
Barclays is Europe’s top financier of ExxonMobil. Exxon is currently leading one of the biggest oil & gas drilling operations of our time, 120 miles off the coast of Guyana. 13.6 billion barrels of oil and 32 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are estimated to be extractable in just one of the drilling blocks Exxon is currently focussing on. Even if only half of the reserves accounted for would get burnt, the resulting emissions could still surpass 1 billion tons of CO2. [2]
Barclays is also the biggest sponsor of the Finnish state-owned utility company Fortum. Fortum owns over 70% of Uniper, a fossil fuel-focused utility, which Barclays also provides funding for. Uniper is currently striving to take Datteln IV online. Datteln IV would be Western Europe’s only new coal plant. Rather than focussing on renewables, Uniper is also planning new LNG infrastructure projects in Europe and Canada. To make matters worse, Uniper is threatening to sue the Dutch government for phasing out coal. [3]
Barclays is also a sponsor of Eskom, a largely state-owned South African electricity company, providing 90% of electricity supply in the country. 80% of South Africa’s power generation is currently based on coal, making the nation one of the top 20 CO2 emitters worldwide. [4] Eskom has been harshly criticized by South African and international NGOs for time and again failing to comply with South Africa’s air pollution laws. [5] According to a recent study, Eskom’s Kendal coal power plant alone was responsible for 274 excess deaths linked to air pollution between the start of 2018 and October 2019. [6]
Coal expansion sponsored by Barclays
Since 2016, Barclays has provided $7.4 billion in financing to companies building new coal power plants. The coal companies supported by the bank since the Paris Agreement are responsible for 120 Gigawatts of already installed coal-fired capacity. However, Barclays is also invested in coal companies with expansion plans: the coal expansionists in Barclays’ portfolio are planning to add a total 58 Gigawatts of new coal-fired capacity to the global pipeline. [7]
Standard Chartered, the UK’s coal bank
With $8.5 billion invested in coal plant developers, mainly in India, Indonesia and the Philippines, Standard Chartered is the UK bank that has provided the most financing for coal expansion since the Paris Agreement. The coal companies in Standard Chartered’s portfolio are responsible for 371 Gigawatts of already installed coal-fired capacity. The coal expansionists the bank is financing are planning to add 118 Gigawatts in new coal-fired capacity to the global energy grid. [8]
Standard Chartered provides financing for some of the world’s most aggressive coal plant expansionists like Adani and NTPC. The Indian Adani Group is most infamous for its highly controversial mega-mine expansion plans in Australia. If the planned construction went ahead, Adani’s Carmichael mine and its coal would account for 4.6 billion tons of CO2 emissions over its lifetime, deplete groundwater, trash Indigenous rights and irreversibly damage the Great Barrier Reef. [9]
NTPC is the world’s top coal plant developer and has a long history of abusing environmental and human rights in India. Aside from the human rights issues and climate impact, NTPC’s ongoing construction of the Rampal coal plant in Bangladesh threatens the world’s largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans, which are also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. [10]
Standard Chartered’s Fossil Business
While Barclays heads the list, Standard Chartered is among Europe’s ten leading investors in ExxonMobil, the main oil company behind the highly risky ultra-deepwater drilling in Guyana. Aside from Guyana, Exxon is driving a number of other big extraction projects forward across the globe, for example in Mozambique and the East Mediterranean, all with financial support from banks like Standard Chartered and Barclays.
Demand’s for Standard Chartered & Barclays
“UK banks are driving the global fossil fuel expansion forward. Barclays and Standard Chartered need to work out their fossil-exit plans if they want to avoid completely embarrassing themselves at COP26 in Glasgow. A good place to start would be to no longer provide financial services to companies expanding their fossil activities. Divesting from all coal miners, utilities and service providers must be finalized by 2030. This is not about formalities, it is about killing an industry that is killing us,” says Katrin Ganswindt, Energy & Finance Campaigner at Urgewald.
For an extensive list of the fossil fuel companies Standard Chartered and Barclays are financing, please read: https://urgewald.org/kampagne/uk-banks
Notes:
[1] Rainforest Action Network, Banking on Climate Change, March 2020, https://www.ran.org/bankingonclimatechange2020/
[2] Urgewald, World Bank paves the way for Carbon Bomb drilling project in Guyana, February 2020, https://urgewald.org/medien/world-bank-paves-way-carbon-bomb-drilling-project-guyana
[3] Urgewald, Fortum for Future?, February 2020, https://urgewald.org/sites/default/files/Briefing_Fortum_1.pdf
[4] Reuters, South African power generation plan keeps coal in the mix, October 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-safrica-energy/south-african-power-generation-plan-keeps-coal-in-the-mix-idUSKBN1WX0OD
[5] Groundwork, NGOs challenge Eskom’s latest application to escape compliance with air pollution laws, February 2020, http://www.groundwork.org.za/archives/2020/news20200207-NGOs_challenge_Eskoms_latest_application_to_escape_compliance.php
[6] Bloomberg, Eskom’s Kendal Causing Excess Pollution Deaths, Studies Show, April 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-29/eskom-s-kendal-causing-excess-pollution-deaths-studies-show
[7] Urgewald, Coalexit.org, Dec 2019, https://coalexit.org/investments-bank-ct?name=Barclays
[8] Urgewald, Coalexit.org, Dec 2019, https://coalexit.org/investments-bank-ct?name=Standard+Chartered
[9] Stop Adani, Fuels Global Warming, https://www.stopadani.com/wrecks_our_climate
[10] BankTrack, Rampal coal power plant, August 2019, https://www.banktrack.org/project/rampal/news/bangladesh_coal_plant_non_compliant_with_equator_principles_shows_new_banktrack_analysis
