More than five years after the Paris Agreement, the UK financial sector is actively undermining Government efforts to phase out coal, according to a new report from NGO Reclaim Finance (1). The group’s research, undertaken in collaboration with German NGO Urgewald, has found that five leading UK banks provided $56 billion of support to companies on the Global Coal Exit List (GCEL) between October 2018 and October 2020 (2). Investors led by Legal & General (L&G) likewise held $47bn in GCEL companies in January 2021. Worse still, the report unveils widespread support for companies planning on expanding coal among UK banks and investors.
On April 16th, the German utility Uniper announced it was filing a compensation claim against the Dutch state under the Energy Charter Treaty framework (ECT). After RWE had filed a similar claim in February, Uniper is now the second company to use the ECT to sue the Netherlands over its Paris-aligned coal exit. Both RWE as well as Uniper’s majority owner, the Finnish state utility Fortum, will hold their annual general meetings tomorrow. The companies are expected to face critical questions about their use of the paralegal arbitration framework in order to obtain exaggerated compensation for fossil assets.
Today, in the lead up to President Biden’s Climate Summit, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) announced it will be net zero by 2040.
Paris, April 21st 2021 - Reclaim Finance has today released the first edition of a scorecard on leading asset managers’ climate commitments, focusing on their approach to the coal sector (1). Produced with four partner NGOs from across Europe and North America,* the report compares 29 asset managers, with a focus on the European market (2). The authors reveal that despite 16 asset managers holding long-term climate commitments, nearly all are failing to take the first step to making them a reality: exiting coal.