U.S. Banks Face Pressure To Cut Fossil Fuel Funding
U.S. Banks Face Pressure To Cut Fossil Fuel Funding | OilPrice.com
Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo shareholders are voting on Tuesday on non-binding resolutions proposed by environmental groups and ESG investors to wind down or phase out financing for fossil fuels.
At last year’s shareholders’ meetings of some of the biggest American banks, similar resolutions won no more than 13% of shareholder support, Reuters notes.
Early this year, As You Sow, Harrington Investments, The Sierra Club Foundation (SCF), and Trillium Asset Management filed two shareholder proposals at six of the top U.S. banks “to move them toward more climate-friendly policies that better align with their public commitments to net zero by 2050.”
Resolutions were filed for shareholder votes at Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.
Fossil fuel financing from the world’s 60 largest banks hit $673 billion in 2022. These banks have funded $5.5 trillion in fossil fuels projects in the seven years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, according to the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report by environmental groups published earlier this month.
To compare, the previous edition of the report from last year showed that the 60 largest banks in the world poured as much as $742 billion in fossil fuel financing in 2021.
For the first time since 2019, JP Morgan dropped from the top spot of the biggest backer of fossil fuels. JP Morgan is no longer the world’s biggest financier of fossil fuels. Last year Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) became the top bank funding oil and gas, the report showed.
Overall, U.S. banks dominated fossil fuel financing, accounting for 28% of all fossil fuel financing in 2022. JPMorgan remains the world’s biggest funder of fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement, while Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America are still among the top 5 fossil financiers since 2016, the report found.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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