UK bank Standard Chartered’s announcement today that it “will not directly finance any new coal-fired power plant projects, including expansions, in any location” has been welcomed by BankTrack as a positive step towards bringing the bank's finance into line with the Paris Agreement goals. [1] The move makes Standard Chartered the seventeenth major international commercial bank to commit to end project finance for new coal power worldwide. [2] It also sees Standard Chartered go further in restricting climate-destructive coal…

European anti-coal campaigners have slammed the decision by an international consortium of commercial banks to provide a loan of more than EUR 950 million to support the coal development activities of PGE (Polska Grupa Energetyczna), Poland’s biggest utility and one of Europe’s top polluters. Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo, Japan’s MUFG Bank and Spain’s Santander make up the consortium, along with Poland’s Powszechna Kasa Oszczędności Bank, which has signed this week’s PLN 4.1 billion financing arrangement with…

Following Dekabank’s welcome public call on RWE to suspend clearing work at Hambach forest in Germany, European civil society campaigners are urging other financiers to follow suit and reconsider their financial ties with the coal utility. German and European civil society organisations sent a letter last week to the 47 main financiers of RWE, asking them to reconsider their business with the company given its ongoing push to expand lignite mining at the cost of the forest and local villages [1]. Since then the call has become more urgent,…

Today, a report produced by 350.org Japan revealed that since the Paris Climate Accord was concluded Japanese financial institutions have increased their financing of domestic coal power development.   From January 2013 to July 2018, 151 Japanese financial groups and their subsidiaries surveyed (including banks, asset management firms and insurance companies) provided approximately US$80 billion in loans and underwriting services to 26 Japanese companies involved in coal development, fossil fuels, and nuclear…

On the occasion of a global day of climate mobilisations, 38 “clean-up” actions were carried out in Société Générale branches by Friends of the Earth France and Non-Violent Action COP21. They called on the bank, France’s biggest financier of dirty energy, to put an end to its support for fossil fuels, and particularly for the Texan shale gas export project Rio Grande LNG. The groups also announced a giant action at the bank’s central Paris branch on December 14, at the end of COP24, if Société…