DATA OVERVIEW AVAILABLE HERE.
TORONTO, Nov. 4, 2022 /CNW/ — Forward COP27, Stand.earth launched new knowledge revealing Royal Financial institution of Canada financed greater than $9.2 billion in fossil gasoline corporations since becoming a member of GFANZ final October, and over $7 billion within the first three quarters of 2022. This contains greater than $16 billion in excessive fossil fuels comparable to tar sands, fracking, and coal on behalf of its clents.
The information, sourced from Bloomberg and Refinitive terminals, compiled by Profundo for Stand.earth, analyzes RBC’s loans and underwriting to fossil gasoline expansionists. This contains offers with corporations like TC Vitality, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Saudi Aramco. RBC is on-track to exceed 2021 fossil financing, regardless of commitments to assist Canada obtain its local weather targets.
“Whereas floods, fires, lethal warmth and air pollution endanger the lives and livelihoods of communities throughout Canada and world wide, the Royal Financial institution of Canada continues to bankroll the gasoline for the hearth,” mentioned Sarah Beuhler, Stand.earth Local weather Finance Strategist.
Stand.earth will submit the info to the Web-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) Steering Committee and UN Secretariat, formally requesting evaluate of RBC’s membership. Stand.earth additionally will submit this to Canada’s Competitors Bureau, which is at the moment investigating RBC for alleged misrepresentations of its local weather claims
RBC joined the Glasgow Monetary Alliance for Web-Zero (GFANZ) in October 2021, promising to align the financial institution’s lending and funding portfolios with a science-based pathway to web zero by 2050. RBC and Canadian banks danger getting booted from the worldwide community as they push again towards the worldwide monetary sector setting requirements for local weather danger.
RBC is Canada’s #1 fossil financial institution and the fifth worst funder of fossil fuels on this planet, financing coal, tar sands, oil and fuel to the tune of CAD $262 billion because the Paris Local weather Settlement was signed in 2016.
“RBC claims it would want to extend fossil gasoline finance to succeed in net-zero. Nobody expects the swap to be flipped in a single day, however to not have a fossil gasoline phase-out plan is blasphemous in 2022,” Beuhler added. “Following the discharge of its newest shameful net-zero commitments, it is clear the financial institution is dangerously disconnected from financial, scientific, and local weather justice actuality, and misstepping amongst even the worst actors of the worldwide monetary sector.”
As RBC greenwashes its local weather commitments and touts Indigenous reconciliation rhetoric, the financial institution is financing poisonous fossil gasoline enlargement tasks world wide that our local weather can not afford, carbon bombs set to set off catastrophic local weather breakdown.
This comes as regulators world wide maintain monetary establishments accountable for greenwashing, together with the UK’s promoting watchdog banning HSBC’s ads for deceptive local weather claims.
Indigenous land defenders face drilling of the Coastal GasLink pipeline (CGL) below Wedzin Kwa. The undertaking violates Moist’suwet’en rights and title, of Moist’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs. Royal Financial institution of Canada is CGL’s main monetary advisor.
“RBC has the chance to really dwell as much as its shiny popularity of company objective, Indigenous reconciliation and significant local weather motion,” Beuhler added. “Meaning stopping funding the enlargement of fossil fuels, and reinvesting in a climate-safe financial system and simply transition for oil and fuel employees and communities.”
SOURCE Stand.earth
For additional data: Lindsay Meiman, [email protected], +1 (917) 970-2281
