All the pressure on banks to stop investments in fossils. Bloomberg Report
An environmental organization has lobbied Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo to stop funding new fossil fuel projects. Bloomberg's insight
Sierra Club has lobbied Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Morgan Stanley to stop funding new fossil fuel supply projects, including coal-fired plants, and endorsed similar proposals for Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. None of the resolutions received shareholder support more than 15% during last week's votes.
While banks have been asked by Sierra Club and other investors to stop funding new fossil fuel developments, the industry instead presented the idea as a request to immediately cut funding for all oil, gas projects. and coal, said Ben Cushing, Washington's Sierra Club campaign manager, Bloomberg reports.
"People who confuse these things know best and are smart enough to know the difference," he said in an interview. "It's hard to see how it's not a deliberate and intentional misrepresentation."
Just under 13% of Citigroup shareholders voted in favor of the Sierra Club measure, according to a preliminary tally at the company's annual meeting. At Bank of America and Wells Fargo, the proposals attracted 11% of the votes in support.
In trying to explain to shareholders why she thought the resolution should be voted on, Citigroup chief executive Jane Fraser said it "is not feasible for the global economy or human health or livelihoods to shut down the economy. fossil fuels overnight ".
Wells Fargo told shareholders that passing the resolution "would effectively preclude us from offering generic loans to the oil and gas sector," while Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said the bank will continue to monitor reports. with clients and portfolios to help transition.
“We work with CEOs and other companies around the world to help drive this transition,” he said. “We will continue to do so”.
Sierra Club, which has existed since the late 19th century and ranks among the most prolific activists on issues related to sustainable finance, said its call to stop funding new projects was in line with the recommendations of the Program's Financial Initiative. United Nations Environment and International Energy Agency scenario for net zero emissions by 2050. In a May 2021 report, the IEA concluded that, in order to avoid a climate catastrophe, there should be no investments in new fossil fuel supply projects.
Wells Fargo said in his power of attorney statement that the IEA ruling is "just one of several scenarios, and these other scenarios do not make this same assumption."
For Cushing, while the absolute level of support for banking proposals has been low, he is hopeful that some progress has been made. This is because any resolution that gets more than 5% support can be resubmitted the following year, and any resolution with more than 10% support is hard for management to ignore.
And this year's resolutions "are really new of their kind" because they want specific limitations on loans and underwriting, rather than asking for targets or information, he said.
At Credit Suisse Group AG, just over 20% of shareholders backed an attempt to force the Swiss bank to disclose more about its efforts to tackle climate change and reduce fossil fuel funding. While the proposal, which was presented by the Ethos Foundation, ShareAction and 11 institutional shareholders, was defeated, Credit Suisse stressed that ESG reporting will become mandatory in its home market from 2024.
In London, at HSBC Holdings Plc's shareholders meeting, executives fought on Friday to speak over climate protesters singing a slightly modified version of Abba's “Money, Money, Money”. Last year, the bank's shareholders backed a resolution to phase out all financing for coal-fired energy and thermal coal mining by 2040, and to share detailed medium- and long-term plans to phase out its financing for fossil fuels.
Barclays Plc and Standard Chartered Plc are up next, with their annual shareholder meetings scheduled for later this week.
(Extract from the press review of eprcomunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/sierra-club-finanziamento-combustibili-fossili/ on Sat, 07 May 2022 06:27:04 +0000.