Ginny Cleaveland, Deputy Press Secretary, Fossil-Free Finance, Sierra Club, ginny.cleaveland@sierraclub.org, 415-508-8498
NEW YORK — The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) dropped a bombshell report today that found 27 giant banks in North America, Europe, and Asia are failing the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. As the AP reported in its exclusive, “The evaluation is significant because it comes from within the financial community, echoing the idea that fossil fuel investments must wind down, which environmentalists, climate scientists, and energy experts have argued for years.”
The report confirms what climate advocates have been pointing out for the past year: No bank has committed to end financing for new oil and gas exploration, and only one has promised to cut all coal financing in line with International Energy Agency guidelines. The IIGCC is a coalition of asset managers and owners, including climate laggard BlackRock, and has a collective $52 trillion under management.
“This report shows big banks are woefully behind on making climate progress. Now the question is: What will investors do about it? IIGCC members like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street are top shareholders of US banks like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America, but these banks have largely been given a pass for their terrible climate records. It’s time for investors to hold them accountable by voting for climate shareholder proposals, and voting out directors at the banks that fail to act,” said Ben Cushing, Campaign Manager in the Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance campaign.
Earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that existing and planned fossil fuel projects are more than the climate can handle, underscoring that without sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel use, we are, as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says, “on a fast track to climate disaster.” The report also warns investors of stranded fossil fuel assets that will amount to $4 trillion in a world where warming is limited to 2°C, and even more in a world where it is limited to 1.5°C.
In the five years after the Paris Agreement was adopted, six US Banks ― JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs ― provided nearly $500 billion in lending and underwriting to the 100 corporations most aggressively expanding fossil fuel operations, including Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, and Gazprom.
“Fossil fuel companies wouldn’t have been able to drive up emissions without banks backing them. Today’s report by the IIGCC echoes what climate advocates and frontline communities have been shouting for decades: banks can’t be trusted to voluntarily lead us out of climate chaos, especially US-based Wall Street banks. We need President Biden and regulators such as the SEC, Treasury Secretary Yellen, and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to use all the tools at their disposal to keep our economy safe from Wall Street’s dangerous gamble on fossil fuels,” said Stop the Money Pipeline Co-Director Jackie Fielder.
See a full list of quotes from members of the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition here.
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About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person's right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.