La Banque Postale announced on Thursday that it would continue its decarbonisation strategy by committing to phase out fossil fuels by 2030. It is thus revising upwards the ambition of its initial objective of carbon neutrality by 2040 and of definitive exit from thermal coal by 2030.
Read alsoLess than one in ten companies measure their CO2 emissions well
Concretely, this means that the bank will change its policy towards companies producing oil or gas, and those which participate in the development of infrastructures in these sectors. It will stop financing energy projects based on oil or gas, provide financial services to the companies that carry out these projects, and gradually divest itself from these companies. For coal, this development is already underway. But at present, the total amount of La Banque Postale's investments still represents 500 million euros in the coal sector and 700 million euros in the oil and gas sectors. This departure from fossil fuels also concerns so-called “
unconventional
gas and oil.
», Which require complex and costly exploitation techniques (shale oil and gas, drilling in deep waters and in arctic zones).
International approval
La Banque Postale's decarbonisation trajectory has been validated by the “
Science Based Targets
” (SBTi)
scientific initiative
, led by four major international organizations: the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project), the WRI (World Resources Institute), the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
La Banque Postale is the first French bank and one of the first financial institutions in the world to have a decarbonisation trajectory validated by the SBTi, affirms the banking establishment.
See also Insufficient recovery plans to decarbonize the economy
“
This theme of responsible banking is a strong positioning argument for us, also for our employer brand.
(...) Employees come to us precisely because there is an answer to their request for meaning
”, affirms Philippe Heim, president of the management board of the establishment.
"
La Banque Postale is (...) the first bank in the world to commit to a total exit from the oil and gas sectors by 2030
", insists the bank in a press release.