BANKS DODGY DEALS CAMPAIGNS
About BankTrack
Visit us
Organisation
Our team
Our board
Guiding principles
Team up with us
Jobs at BankTrack
Our annual reports
Funding and finances
History
BankTrack in the media
Our privacy policy
Donate
2023-03-17 00:00:00
Briefing: The role of financial institutions in decarbonising the steel sector
2023-03-09 00:00:00
Dutch bank ING supports controversial pipeline to import gas from authoritarian Azerbaijan
2023-02-23 00:00:00
Financial institutions need to address steelmaking’s coal addiction
2023-02-07 00:00:00
What COP15 means for banks: meeting the Global Biodiversity Framework requires protecting Indigenous rights and divesting from harmful industries
2023-03-20 08:50:41
Who dares to finance Eni and Exxon’s dangerous Rovuma gas plans in Mozambique?
2023-03-14 14:59:00
New ING policy could spark bank shift away from financing oil and gas infrastructure
2023-02-24 13:46:14
Pego power station conversion plans halted
2022-12-14 11:08:26
HSBC announces it will no longer finance new oil and gas fields
Connect
2022-11-22 00:00:00
Banking on Thin Ice: Two years in the heat
2022-11-17 00:00:00
BankTrack Global Human Rights Benchmark 2022
2022-10-21 00:00:00
Burning forests in the name of clean energy? How banks are failing to exclude the harmful wood biomass industry from finance
2022-06-28 00:00:00
The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP): Finance Risk Update No. 3
2022-04-05 00:00:00
The BankTrack Human Rights Benchmark Asia
2022-03-30 00:00:00
Banking on Climate Chaos 2022
See all publications
Sections
Banks Dodgy Deals Campaigns
Our campaigns
Banks and Climate
Banks and Human Rights
Banks and Nature
Banks and Pandemics
Our projects
Tracking the NZBA
Banks and Putin's war in Ukraine
Tracking the Equator Principles
Tracking the PRBs
Find a Better Bank
Banks and the OECD Guidelines
Media
News Publications
Fossil Banks No Thanks StopEACOP Forests & Finance Banks & Biodiversity Drop JBS Bank of Coal Don't Buy into Occupation
BankTrack
About BankTrack Visit us Organisation Our team Our board Guiding principles Team up with us Jobs at BankTrack Our annual reports Funding and finances History BankTrack in the media Our privacy policy Donate
Successes Contact BankTrack
Donate Mailing list Facebook Twitter Login
Home › Partner news ›
Partner News

Standard Chartered’s new climate policy aims for failure

Announced on the eve of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Standard Chartered Bank’s new climate policy upholds the bank’s status as a climate laggard, according to environmental finance organisation Market Forces
2021-10-28
By: Market Forces
Contact:

Adam McGibbon, MarketForces, +44 7709 204 187

Standard Chartered head offices in London. Photo: Cobaltblue25 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
2021-10-28
By: Market Forces
Contact:

Adam McGibbon, MarketForces, +44 7709 204 187

Market Forces recently filed a shareholder resolution for Standard Chartered’s 2022 annual general meeting. The resolution, co-filed with the Friends Provident Foundation, calls on the bank to live up to its ‘net zero by 2050’ pledge by following the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s ‘Net Zero by 2050’ pathway. The pathway, which gives a fifty-fifty chance of meeting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C temperature target, states that as of this year, no new coal mines, coal plants, or oil and gas fields can be built.

Standard Chartered’s new policy fails miserably to live up to the IEA’s net zero by 2050 scenario:

  • The policy allows Standard Chartered to continue financing coal giants like Indonesia’s Adaro Energy, which has no plans to stop extracting coal and plans to continue coal production at current rate until at least 2040. Adaro has 1.1 billion tonnes of coal reserves, which if combusted would be equivalent to the annual emissions of India. Standard Chartered’s own analysis rated Adaro’s business plan as aligning with a catastrophic ‘hothouse Earth’ scenario of 5-6°C of global warming, yet nothing in the updated policy clearly rules out additional funding of Adaro and other miners in the same position;
  • The policy allows the continued financing of new oil and gas projects, as well as companies seeking to expand oil and gas, at a time when the IEA has said there can be no new fossil fuel supply in order to meet the goal of net zero by 2050. This year alone, Standard Chartered has funded many companies expanding the fossil fuel industry. This support includes financing for Saudi Aramco, the world’s single largest corporate carbon emitter, the troubled Mozambique Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) project, and financing for the Malaysian oil giant Petronas to develop an additional oil and gas processing unit off the Brazilian coast. All of these deals would be permissible under the updated policy;
  • The bank says it will stop financing “companies that are expanding in thermal coal". This principle is welcome, however, this will only apply ‘at the client level’, allowing parent companies to still recieve finance and fund their coal-expanding subsidiaries. The bank has also not clarified the metric that it will use to determine whether a company is ‘expanding in thermal coal’ – whether it will be determined by, for example, tonnes of coal mined or revenue generated;
  • No coal exit date – unlike competitors like HSBC, the bank has still not committed to finally end the financing of coal. Under this policy, in 2030 Standard Chartered can still fund diversified companies with significant coal interests.

Adam McGibbon, UK Campaign Lead at Market Forces, said: "the International Energy Agency has said ‘net zero by 2050’ means an end to fossil fuel expansions. Standard Chartered doesn’t seem to realise this includes oil and gas projects around the world. The bank needs to either write a real climate policy that aligns with the IEA scenario and rules out all fossil fuel expansions worldwide, be they coal, oil or gas, or drop its increasingly flimsy claim to have a net zero by 2050 target.

Our door remains open to withdrawing our shareholder resolution, if Standard Chartered pledges to do what science demands.”

Yuyun Indradi, Trend Asia Indonesia Executive Director, said: "Since 2006, Standard Chartered has provided over US$400 million to Adaro Energy. In April 2021, it helped provide another US$400 million for Adaro Energy’s coal mining as part of a syndicate of banks. If Standard Chartered’s new policy allows the bank to continue to fund Adaro Energy, who has no plans to produce any less coal, the policy can’t be worth very much."

 

Notes for editors:

  • For more information, contact Adam McGibbon at adam.mcgibbon@marketforces.org.uk or +447709 204 187
  • Market Forces campaigns for financial institutions that have custody of our money to protect not damage our environment www.marketforces.org.uk 
  • The Market Forces resolution text is available here, and the resolution supporting statement is here
  • The influential Banking on Climate Chaos report, the most comprehensive overview of bank financing of fossil fuels, shows that in the four years following the signing of the Paris Agreement, Standard Chartered provided US$ 31.42 billion to the coal, oil and gas sectors since the 2015 Paris Agreement was signed.
Banks

Standard Chartered

United Kingdom
Active
Dodgy Deals

Mozambique LNG

Mozambique
Project
Target
Oil and Gas Extraction | ...

Mozambique LNG

Mozambique
There are no active project profiles for this item now.
There are no active company profiles for this item now.

Adaro Energy

Indonesia
Company
on record
Coal Mining | ...

Adaro Energy

Indonesia

Saudi Aramco

Saudi Arabia
Company
on record
Oil and Gas Extraction

Saudi Aramco

Saudi Arabia
Sections
Banks Policies Dodgy Deals Campaigns
Our campaigns
Banks and Climate Banks and Human Rights Banks and Nature Banks and Pandemics
Our projects
Tracking the NZBA Banks and Putin's war in Ukraine Tracking the Equator Principles Tracking the PRBs Find a Better Bank Banks and the OECD Guidelines
Media
News Publications
Fossil Banks No Thanks StopEACOP Forests & Finance Banks & Biodiversity Drop JBS Bank of Coal Don't Buy into Occupation
BankTrack
About BankTrack Visit us Organisation Our team Our board Guiding principles Team up with us Jobs at BankTrack Our annual reports Funding and finances History BankTrack in the media Our privacy policy Donate
Successes Contact BankTrack
Vismarkt 15
6511 VJ Nijmegen
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 24 324 9220
Contact@banktrack.org
Donate Mailing list Facebook Twitter
©2022 BankTrack
BankTrack is a registered charity in the Netherlands (ANBI) - RSIN 813874658
Find our privacy policy here

Stay up to date

Sign up now for all BankTrack's news


Make a comment

Your comment will be reviewed, before being posted