On March 11 the Financial Times reported that HSBC was successful in securing investor support for HSBC’s plan to address climate change. By doing so HSBC was able to avoid a vote at its shareholders annual general meeting on a proposal to revamp its financing of coal and address other financing for companies and projects with a carbon intensive footprint. But HSBC is far from the worst among large banks relatieve to carbon footprint financing as detailed in a report issued by a coalition of NGOs focused on climate change. HSBC ended up ranked 11th in that report and was only with total lending on fossil fuels about a third of the amount lent by JP Morgan Chase – the largest lender with more than $300 billion lent over the time period covered.
This report used Bloomberg data to analyse 60 large banks and their financing of fossil fuels over the years since 2015 when the Paris Climate Accord was agreed. In that time more than $3.8 trillion was lent by these banks to support fossil fuels. Although there was a decline in 2020 relative to both 2019 and 2018, the amount lent was still greater than in 2015 and 2016. And consistently more than $700 billion was lend in every year since the Paris Climate Accord. What makes the report extremely valuable is the ability to sort the underlying data by a variety of criteria including each bank’s policies regarding fossil fuels. Furthermore there is a detailed description of the methodology used for the report that provides useful transparency.
