Global Report: Canada’s Banks Lag on Climate
A new report out today from UK based think tank Influence Map highlighted how far behind Canada’s big banks are when it comes to climate, even when compared to their larger US counterparts.
Influence Map found the banks “are undermining their own net zero commitments through their financing activities, lack of robust sector financing policies, and inconsistent policy engagement”.
Highlights of the report include:
- Banks fossil fuel financing activities are highly misaligned with net zero, and increased their fossil fuel financing while European and US banks dropped it
- Canadian banks lack even a basic thermal coal phaseout policies
- None of the banks use their lobbying muscle to advocate for climate friendly policies. In fact they are aligned with lobby groups (like the Canadian Association for Petroleum Producers) who block climate policies
- Canada’s big banks also lag on clean energy financing, with ratios far below European or US banks
The Influence Map report was released (coindidentally) on the same day as RBC released a new climate plan. The report garnered significant national and global media attention including in Bloomberg, The Financial Post, Canada’s National Observer, Reuters, ESG News, Corporate Knights, BNN Bloomberg, The Canadian Press, and Yahoo News.