Investors Are Backing Away From Fossils – Below 2C
A few days ahead of the 5th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, 18 NGOs released Five Years Lost – How Finance is Blowing the Carbon Budget. The report highlights 12 of the most devastating fossil fuel projects that are either on the drawing board or under development. “These expansion projects alone would use up three-quarters of the total remaining carbon budget if we are to have a 66% probability of limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius,” says the report. And yet, against this backdrop of fossil fuel expansion, there are signs that investors are slowly backing away from fossils as outlined in the following piece first published in Yale Climate Connection.
The six largest banks in the U.S. have publicly stated they will not back oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. In December 2019, Goldman Sachs was the first major American bank to announce such a decision, as it also backed away from any new thermal coal mines worldwide.
Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citi all followed suit. Bank of America was the holdout among major U.S. banks, until mounting pressure from indigenous groups, environmental advocates, and shareholders prompted it to announce in early December that it too will withhold funding for Arctic drilling projects.