Banks ending funding in fossil fuels

Headed by the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, commercial banks including ING, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland, along with investors such as BMO Global Asset Management, have announced their intention to phase out or stop investing in coal power generation. Most notably, in April 2018 , HSBC announced the ending of project finance for new tar-sands projects by Canada, including the proposed Keystone XL and Line 3 Expansion pipelines. A year previously, Westpac, Australia’s second-largest bank, announced that it would not lend to coal projects in new coal-producing basins.

This is a major departure of investment strategy. For example, in the past five years, the World Bank Group provided almost $6 billion to coal projects. Eighty percent of China’s overseas energy investments of nearly $117 billion have gone towards fossil fuels, of which nearly $19 billion was directed to coal projects. And according to a Carbon Test Report, the big European and American banks invested $257 billion in coal between 2009 and 2014. Read Full Article - eniday, March 6, 2019