Financed emissions: A big problem for banks, and a bigger problem for the climate

What is the total greenhouse gas footprint of Citigroup, Bank of America, or UBS? Right now, we don’t know, and that’s a major problem for both banks and the climate. Banks emit greenhouse gases to power their offices and branches, but they also finance the emissions of other companies through their loans, investments, and other [...]

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WestLB Takes A Brave Step In The Right Direction

This post is by Yann Louvel, BankTrack Climate and Energy Campaign Coordinator. Last month we got some promising news from WestLB, the German bank. They produced a new policy on Arctic drilling (which our friends at Platform have written about here) and they published an update of their coal policy. While the first edition of [...]

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Bank of America’s Climate Commitment Ignores the Big Picture

Bank of America today announced a new greenhouse gas emissions reduction commitment covering their office facilities. While I welcome Bank of America’s continued acknowledgment that reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions is critical for combating the climate crisis, Bank of America must move quickly beyond commitments to reduce the carbon footprint of direct energy consumption [...]

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What is the carbon footprint of my checking account?

RAN released a new report today, “Financing Global Warming: Canadian Banks and Fossil Fuels“, which calculates for the first time the carbon footprint from financing of fossil fuels by 7 leading Canadian banks – RBC, TD, Scotiabank, BMO, CIBC, Desjardins and Vancity.  Along with the report, we also launched a new website, climatefriendlybanking.org. The report [...]

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