Enlarge image
Commerzbank logo
Photo: Jan Huebner / imago images
Commerzbank will give greater weight to climate and environmental protection in its business in the future.
Existing customers who currently generate at least 20 percent of their sales or their electricity generation with coal are given time by 2025 to develop a plan for phasing out coal by 2030.
»We support our customers in their transformation and want to give them the necessary planning security for this.
However, if we don't see any specific efforts on the part of the customer to make the business model sustainable, we will end the business relationship, ”announced corporate customer boss Michael Kotzbauer on Monday.
No new business with coal profiteers
Commerzbank says it will not enter into new business relationships with companies that currently generate more than 20 percent of their sales or electricity generation with coal.
The institute will also not enter into any new business relationships with companies that are pursuing expansion plans for oil and gas.
The financing of new oil power plants as well as financing for oil and gas production projects are "fundamentally excluded".
The Frankfurt-based MDax Group has set all of this in a new directive for fossil fuels, which is to apply from January 1, 2022.
"We underline our claim to direct financial flows in the direction of the Paris climate target and we are pushing the transformation," said Commerzbank boss Manfred Knof.
The core of the Paris Agreement of 2015 is to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees compared to the pre-industrial level.
In the face of advancing climate change, environmentalists and scientists are calling for more efforts to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂), for example.
In the financial sector, there are now numerous efforts to improve climate protection.
beb / dpa