Dacht
dak ik uit m’n stoel donderde toen ik gisteren een kop van een
Unearthed artikel las: (de 4 grootste) Britse banken steunen de
kolenindustrie met maar ‘liefst’ 25 miljard pond (ons miljard, dus
Engels biljoen).
Door het
financieren van o.a. nieuwbouw van kolencentrales dragen de banken bij aan
de vernietiging van de aarde zoals wij die kennen en waar de gevolgen van de klimaatverandering intussen al duizenden slachtoffers hebben gemaakt…. Vergeet niet (wat men bij die banken al lang is vergeten) dat wij na het volledig ‘losbarsten’ van de bankencrisis de banken op de been moesten houden met vele miljarden van ons belastinggeld……
Moet je
nagaan: 4 jaar na het Klimaatakkoord van Parijs, waar ook de
bankwereld beterschap beloofde, dit jammer genoeg onder door henzelf
opgestelde criteria, ofwel geldig tot de deur achter de laatste
klimaatganger in Parijs werd gesloten….. (hetzelfde kan je stellen van de grote oliemaatschappijen, waar Shell het klimaatakkoord van Parijs op 8 punten niet nakomt…..*)
De banken moeten als de oliemaatschappijen dan ook betalen voor de gevolgen van de klimaatverandering die zij met leningen mogelijk hebben gemaakt, sterker nog: als de oliemaatschappijen zouden de grofgraaiers van de banken terecht moeten staan voor het Internationaal Strafhof (ICC) wegens massamoord en grootschalige vernietiging van natuur, plus de vernietiging van roerende en onroerende goederen……..
Moet je nagaan: The Royal Bank of Scotland is in feite een staatsbank, ofwel ook op andere manieren subsidieert de Britse regering het verbranden van steenkool, zoals onze regering dat ook nog steeds doet en dan durft zijne VVD leugenachtige hufterigheid Rutte te zeggen dat Nederland voorop loopt op duurzaam gebied….. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Ach ja, eens een leugenaar…….
Voor de begeleidende staatjes, zie het origineel (bijzonder lullig van Unearthed dat je deze niet kan overnemen…..)
Revealed:
UK banks’ £25 billion support for global coal
UK
banks have supported companies building new coal plants with
financing worth almost £25 billion since the Paris climate deal,
according to data gathered by environmental organisations Urgewald
and BankTrack and shared with Unearthed.
In
2015, world leaders agreed to ensure finance reduced greenhouse gas
emissions, but new data shows that HSBC, Standard Chartered, Barclays
and Royal Bank of Scotland continued to support firms investing in
coal.
The
data shows that those four banks supported companies with plans to
build new coal plants to the tune of $31.8 billion or £24.7 billion
between 2016 and 2019.
Between
them, these companies plan to build 174 gigawatts of new coal plants,
equivalent to the total operating capacity of the EU and Australia
put together. However, industry data is not yet sufficiently
transparent to calculate how much of the money is used directly for
coal plant construction.
The
plans include the Adani megamine in Australia, a controversial new
coal plant in Germany and huge coal expansion in Indonesia.
Over
the period, HSBC was the biggest coal financer out of all UK banks,
with its support worth £8.4 billion. This consisted of £2.1 billion
of loans and £6.1 billion of underwriting.
Underwriting
is what banks do when companies issue bonds on the public markets. An
underwriting bank purchases bonds and then sells them on.
Despite
positioning themselves as concerned about climate change Barclays and
Standard Chartered actually increased the amount of support they
provided in the last two years, compared to 2014-2016.
The
figure for Barclays rose from £2.8 billion to £5.8 billion and the
figure for Standard Chartered rose from £2.5 billion to £6.6
billion.
HSBC,
meanwhile, has decreased its support for companies building new coal
plants from £8.7 billion to £6.1 billion.
The
state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland exited the global coal sector last
year, providing no financing at all for companies building new coal
plants from January to September.
Four
years since Paris
In
2015 at the United Nations climate conference in Paris, leaders
signed an agreement including a commitment to “making finance flows
consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and
climate-resilient development”.
The
UK will next year host next year’s annual climate conference,
billed as the most important since Paris because world leaders are
meant to upgrade pledges made in 2015.
Greig
Aitken, coal campaigner at BankTrack, told Unearthed:
“One year out from the UK’s hosting of the UN Climate Summit, if
Barclays, HSBC and Standard Chartered don’t act rapidly to rein in
their financing of coal expansion companies, the UK government should
take steps or risk turning up in Glasgow with coal dust on their
faces thanks to our big fossil banks.
“Compared
to their European counterparts, UK banks have stubbornly failed for
several years to adequately respond to the worsening climate
emergency by at least introducing policy restrictions to
significantly curb their sponsoring of coal expansion around the
world. Cosmetic policy tweaks no longer cut it.”
The
data, which was gathered from financial databases at Bloomberg and
Refinitiv and from company reporting, is part of a bigger report that
Urgewald and BankTrack plan to publish on the financing of new coal
plants globally. They shared the UK information with Unearthed in
advance of the final report.
It
is based on Urgewald’s list of 258 companies with known coal plant
expansion plans, 51 of which received financial support from UK
banks.
Between
2017 and 2019, the Finnish state-owned energy company Fortum received
more funding from UK banks than any other company with coal expansion
plans. It received £2.5 billion from Barclays, mainly in loans, and
£1.7 billion in loans from Royal Bank of Scotland, which is itself
state-owned.
Fortum
recently agreed to take control of the German energy company Uniper
in a 2.3 billion euro deal, meaning it will take over the company’s
numerous coal plants.
According
to Urgewald’s data, Fortum makes only 5% of its revenue from coal
and only 3% of the power it produces is from coal. However, Uniper is
involved in a controversial plan to build a new coal plant in
Germany.
The
plant, Datteln 4, is controversial because of the German government’s
plan to abandon coal as an energy source by 2038. According to a
report from Reuters, the 1.1 gigawatt plant will be allowed to enter
service despite the government’s commission recommending that no
new coal plants be brought into use.
A
spokesperson for Fortum said: “We don’t invest in Uniper because
of coal but despite coal. Our goal is to create a leader in Europe’s
energy transition. The energy transition will require significant
investments in the coming decades not only in renewables, but also in
gas, energy storage, and other flexibility solutions to provide
security of supply.”
A
Uniper spokesperson said that Fortum’s finances were a matter for
Fortum but added that the Datteln 4 project had not received any
“bilateral loans” from UK banks.
Another
state-owned company is second on the list. Perusahaan Listrik Negara
(PLN), an Indonesian government-owned utility company, received £1.8
billion in support from HSBC and £746m from Standard Chartered.
Coal
plants owned by PLN, amounting to 20 gigawatts, already emit 74
million tonnes of CO2 a year, or around 14% of the country’s total
emissions. It plans to develop another 10 gigawatts of coal plants.
According
to a 2015 report from Greenpeace,
pollution from coal plants has caused the premature deaths of 6,500
people in Indonesia per year. That same report predicted that if
plants currently planned in the country are built, this could rise to
28,300.
Standard
Chartered and Barclays have also provided financial support to the
Indian coal firm Adani. Standard Chartered made a $150m corporate
loan in 2017 and a $600m corporate loan in 2019, while Barclays and
Standard Chartered both underwrote bonds in 2017 and 2019.
The
company is well-known for its mega-mine expansion plans in Australia,
where it is building a massive coal mine. The mine will produce 2.3
billion tonnes of coal over 60 years, according to Adani, making it
one of the largest in the world.
The
role of finance in driving climate change has come under increasing
scrutiny over the last year. In the UK, the issue is of particular
concern given British banks’ outsize influence globally – the UK
banking sector is the largest in Europe and the fourth largest in the
world.
Last
month, Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, warned that the
global financial system is backing projects that will raise the
temperature of the planet by more than 4C, far above the 2C limit
pledged in the Paris agreement.
Labour
has promised to give the Bank extra powers to monitor City firms’
progress on carbon emissions.
Banks
have looked to address this issue, introducing restrictions on their
finance policy restrictions in the last two years which have ended
all direct ‘project finance’ to new coal mines and coal plants
globally.
This
data, however, shows that they have continued to use corporate
finance, loaning money to firms involved in coal development and
underwriting loans to those companies.
A
spokesperson for Standard Chartered told Unearthed: “Not
having seen the report or its methodology we can’t comment on the
specific figures, but as you are probably aware we announced
last year that
we will no longer finance new coal power plant projects and we are
revisiting our approach to clients who are dependent on coal for
business revenues (more to come on that later).”
A
spokesperson for Barclays also pointed to the bank’s new policy on
project finance, saying it agrees “with the objective of reducing
financing for coal-powered energy production”.
They
added that they disputed the findings of the report, saying:
“Barclays has comprehensive criteria and controls in place for our
energy related financing, and we firmly believe in supporting the
transition to a low carbon economy.”
An
HSBC spokesperson said: “HSBC recognises the role of the financial
sector in addressing climate change. We do not support new thermal
coal mines and have not financed any new coal fired power plants
anywhere since April 2018.”
======================================
* Zie: ‘Shell houdt zich niet aan het klimaatakkoord: 8 bewijzen‘
Zie ook:
‘Milieugroepen buitengesloten van klimaattop Madrid‘
‘Het grootste olieveld ter wereld: niet in Saoedi-Arabië maar in de VS >> het Permian-bekken‘
‘Klimaattop Madrid: de grote vervuilers hebben veel te veel invloed‘
‘Klimaattop Madrid bij voorbaat mislukt‘
‘IETA, lobbygroep van oliemaatschappijen en andere grote vervuilers, manipuleert klimaattoppen‘
‘Bas Eickhout (‘GroenLinks’ EU) was vanuit Bonn wel tevreden over het Rutte 3 regeerakkoord……….‘ (dezelfde Eickhout die als grofgraaier in de EU stemde voor het langer toestaan van het kankerverwekkende gif glyfosaat, onderdeel van Roundup…..)
‘Universiteit van Cambridge overstag: 6 miljoen pond voor onderzoek naar oliewinning t.b.v. Shell‘
‘Amazonegebied in brand, Black Rock verdient daar vele miljoenen mee‘
‘PvdA, CDA en VVD willen zich niet bij het klimaatakkoord van Parijs neerleggen!!!!‘
