The Tanjung Jati B coal power plant in Jepara, Central Java. Following pressure from campaigners, French banks Crédit Agricole and Société Générale pulled out of financing the TJB2 expansion project. Photo: Kemal Jufri / Greenpeace

'Banks: Quit Coal!'

From concerns over air pollution and acid rain to its destructive impact on the climate, coal has been recognised as the dirtiest, most dated and most inefficient fossil fuel option. It is the most emissions intensive fossil fuel and the leading cause of climate change. Globally, coal-fired power plants are the largest source of carbon dioxide – greater than tropical deforestation or oil use for transportation.

These facts have been well-established for some time, yet it is only very recently that international private banks, which have collectively provided the global coal industry with hundreds of billions of dollars in financial support over decades, have started to publicly sound alarm bells about both coal's dreadful impacts and its increasing unsoundness as an investment commodity.

Such alarm bells are growing across the banking sector, in advice to investors published in recent years by banks such as Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Citi. This kind of recognition of the threat posed by continuing the extraction and burning of coal, albeit very belated, is welcome from the banking sector. Yet, as we expose in our coalbanks.org website, which we launched in 2014 and which hosts the most extensive data set so far on the links between banks and the coal industry, it is scarcely being matched in tangible deeds and real divesting from coal.

And the latest lending figures revealed in the Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card 2017 indicate the challenge which remains to reduce the coal finance mountain. Between 2014 and 2016, 37 of the biggest international banks provided globally:

• $57.92 billion for coal mining
• $74.71 billion for coal power.                                                                                           

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Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card 2017.

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Coal campaign breakthroughs

There have been a number of significant coal finance breakthroughs in the last few years, in large part due to campaign pressure applied by BankTrack and our allies engaged in international coal campaigning. As of June 2017, 11 major international banks have committed to end their direct financing for new coal mines and new coal plants worldwide. A lot of other banks now have to follow this lead and all the world’s major banks still need to stop their ‘indirect financing’ to companies planning any new coal projects, as the window for taking action to drastically reduce carbon emissions and avoid an outright climate emergency is rapidly closing.

However, as evidenced by persistent multi-billion dollar financing for coal mining and coal power, the banking sector is still dragging its heels and remains resistant to fully cut ties with coal. At BankTrack we believe that in order to end further devastating impacts resulting from their investments, private banks must take steps to disengage from all activities and projects that substantially contribute to climate change and environmental and community degradation.

In the coal sector, therefore, they must:

• End support for all new coal extraction and delivery, and all new coal-fired power plants projects, worldwide;
• End support for all coal companies that meet one of the following criteria:

1) Companies which are planning investments into new coal mines, new coal power plants or coal infrastructure, or which are planning to buy existing coal mines, coal power plants or coal infrastructure.

2) Companies in which 30% or more of their revenues or power production are coal-based;

3) Companies whose annual production, consumption or trading of coal exceeds an absolute threshold of 20 million tons of coal annually.

BankTrack coal campaigns

In recent years, and in tandem with our partners, our coal campaigning around the world has focused on the dodgy deals pictured on this world map. The main active ones have been the following:

• Mountain Top Removal Coal Mining in the United States

Mountaintop removal (MTR) mining is a form of strip mining in which coal companies use explosives to blast as much as 800 to 1000 feet off the tops of mountains in order to reach the coal seams that lie underneath. Rather than remove coal from the mountain, MTR removes the mountain from the coal. And, needless to say, this has also created havoc and misery for scores of communities across America's Appalachian Mountains.

However, our targeting of major key banks that have long supported the MTR sector has reaped positive dividends in the last few years, and as a result of campaign momentum in 2014-2015, there are now – as of June 2017 – 19 major US and European banks which have publicly committed to pull out of this most controversial and catastrophic form of coal mining.

• Coal mining in the Galilee basin in Australia, including these projects:
  • Alpha Coal Mine 
  • Carmichael Coal Mine
  • Great Barrier Reef Coal & Gas Exports 

The Galilee Basin is a 247,000 square kilometre thermal coal basin in the central region of the Australian state of Queensland. It is one of the largest untapped coal reserves on the planet. There are currently nine coal mega-mines proposed for the Galilee Basin, including Alpha Coal and Carmichael, which together make it the second biggest fossil fuel expansion proposed anywhere in the world (after Western China). 

At full production, the proposed Galilee Basin projects would double Australia’s coal exports to over 600 million tonnes a year. If the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the burning of Galilee Basin coal were compared to fossil fuel emissions from other countries, the Galilee Basin would rank as the world’s seventh biggest contributor of CO2 pollution. The development of the Galilee Basin is the driver for the proposed expansion of coal ports along the Great Barrier Reef coast, which is causing international concern.

A global coalition of NGOs has been opposing these projects for years, and has targeted international banks involved or that could get involved in these dodgy deals, resulting in the withdrawal of Société Générale from the Alpha Coal project, the withdrawal of Commonwealth Bank and Standard Chartered from the Carmichael project, as well as commitments from 21 major banks – as of June 2017 – not to get involved in the financing of the Abbot Point coal export terminal, the Carmichael project, any Galilee basin project, or in fact any new coal mine project globally.

Other priority coal projects around the world that BankTrack is collaborating on with local and international partners

Coal mines and coal infrastructure projects:

• Amasra coal mine and power station - Turkey
• Cerrejon coal mine - Columbia
• IndoMet coal project - Indonesia
• Kaltim Prima Coal - Indonesia
• Maules Creek coal mine - Australia
• Phulbari coal mine - Bangladesh
• Great Barrier Reef Coal & Gas Exports- Australia

Coal power plants projects:

• Batang Coal Power Project - Indonesia
• Cirebon 2 coal fired power plant - Indonesia
• Kusile coal power plant - South Africa
• Medupi coal-fired power plant - South Africa
• Ostroleka C coal and biomass power plant - Poland
• Pljevlja II lignite-fired power plant - Montenegro
• Plomin C Coal Power Plant- Croatia
• Punta Catalina-Hatillo coal power project - Dominican Republic
• Rampal Coal Based Thermal Power Plant- Bangladesh
• TES 6 coal power plant - Slovenia
• Tanjung Jati B 2 - Indonesia
• Tata Mundra Ultra Mega Power Plant (UMPP)- India

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