Are the big French banks making exceptions to their promises to suspend all financing to the coal sector to the point of being accused of “deceptive” practices? This is the question asked by the non-governmental organization Reclaim Finance in a report published on Tuesday, October 15.
While recognizing the efforts of the four main French players (BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Société Générale and BPCE, Natixis’ parent company), the NGO questions several “defects” in their coal exit policies.
These commitments, assumed since 2016 following the Paris climate agreement, have been and continue to be the subject of regular updates, with a constant double objective shared by the four groups: the end of any exposure of banks’ credit portfolios to coal. , in 2030 for OECD countries and the European Union, and in 2040 for the rest of the world.
These elections have already had undeniable effects, since Reclaim Finance itself notes a reduction of 59%, up to 924 million dollars (approximately 848 million euros), between 2019 and 2023 in financing (loans and participation in share issues or bonds) of the four large French banks. banks to companies included in the Global Coal Exit List, the census of the 1,400 main actors in the thermal coal sector prepared by the German NGO Urgewald.
“A gap between words and actions”
By comparison, Chinese bank funding reached $88 billion in 2023 and U.S. banks’ funding reached $20 billion, according to Urgewald’s tally published in June. “We do not deny that we are moving forward, we do not say that nothing has happened since 2020explains Yann Louvel, analyst at Reclaim Finance. But there is a gap between words and actions: it is clearly problematic to continue to financially support groups that continue to exploit new mines and build new coal-fired power plants. »
The NGO denounces, in particular, the application of banking exclusion policies to companies that operate directly in the coal sector but not to their parent company, of exemptions if the company developing a coal project owns less than 50% of it or including credit decisions based on confidential documents.
He thus criticizes the banks for their financial support to twenty-six groups in the coal sector “problematic”among them the Japanese Mitsubishi or the South Korean Posco, which continue to develop electricity production capacities from coal, the mining giant Glencore, which increases its annual coal production capacities, or the American electricity companies American Electric Power and NRG Energy, “of which the launch date is not known by the sector”.
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