Raising banking standards
Banks wield huge power over our economy
The financing decisions made by banks today will influence the world we live in tomorrow. For example, when banks finance fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, they help to accelerate the climate crisis, which threatens the health of people and planet. The banking sector is not yet doing its bit to avert the worst consequences of climate change or biodiversity loss. This has to change.
We partner with a range of stakeholders, including asset managers, asset owners, NGOs and individual retail investors to demand banks phase out financing to polluting activities, and increases the flow of capital into low-carbon alternatives. We also engage with banks directly and push them to enact robust fossil fuel phase-out policies.
We win change in three key ways:
Engagement
We coordinate private and public engagements between banks and their institutional and retail shareholders. For example, we meet with banks to discuss our research and provide them with tailored recommendations, and we help their investors to file resolutions and send letters to them.
Find out moreResearch
We assess banks based on their performance on climate change and biodiversity, examining things like their fossil fuel policies. See below in the resources section for our latest research.
Find out moreCampaigns
We work with investors, NGOs and indigenous groups to hold banks accountable. For example, we help affected communities make their voices heard at the AGMs of banks financing destructive projects in their local areas.
Find out moreWe turn up at banks’ AGMs to hold Boards directly accountable for their impacts on people and planet. Watch our video diary for a day in the life at Barclays’ 2024 AGM:
Our current campaign priorities
Coal, Oil & Gas phase out
Ensuring banks develop targets and policies to phase out their financing of coal, oil and gas on pathways aligned with 1.5C warming, as per the Paris Agreement.
Find out moreCapital markets facilitation of emissions
Ensuring banks take full responsibility for the emissions they facilitate through the capital markets (such as through bonds). Read our blog on why this matters.
Find out moreGreen finance
Ensuring banks not only phase out of fossil fuels, but also rapidly scale up financing of sustainable activities to facilitate the energy transition. Our green finance work ensures banks' green finance targets and disclosures are transparent and robust.
Find out moreOur campaigning works. Here's how we moved HSBC:
Resources
Mind the strategy gap: how disjointed climate targets are setting banks up to miss net-zero
Europe’s biggest banks have a vital role to play in financing the transition to a low carbon economy. However, our research has found that the climate targets of Europe’s 20 largest banks are not fit for purpose. Their decarbonisation targets are too narrow, their sustainable finance targets are not rooted in clear, robust methodology, and they are not sufficiently aligned with one another. This means it is unlikely the banks' current climate targets will succeed in shifting enough financing away from fossil fuels toward renewable power, green infrastructure and technologies at the speed and scale we need to prevent a dangerously heated world. In our report, we are urging banks to set climate targets that are ambitious, transparent and coherent. This is vital for banks to show how they plan to shift financing to critical parts of the transition, such as expanding renewable energy and making real estate more energy efficient.
