The world's leading silver, insufficient efforts for sustainable finance = report

[Washington, 3rd Reuters]-A report released by Washington Research Institute World Resource Institute (WRI) on the 3rd, states that many of the world's major banks still work on sustainable finance as a countermeasure against global warming. It was revealed that he continued to finance fossil fuels.

WRI has revealed a tool to compare and analyze responses to environmental issues publicly announced by 50 major private banks around the world. According to the report, only 23 banks out of 50 have announced loans for sustainable energy projects as of July.

In addition, these 23 banks provided loans to the fossil fuel business in 2016-18 (annual average), which was nearly twice the amount of the loan expressed to the sustainable business (annualized). Only 7 banks had sustainable business financing targets (annualized) that exceeded the amount of fossil fuel-related transactions.

According to WRI's Sustainable Investment Manager Julia Christianson, less than half of the banks that have announced a loan to sustainable business have a transparent mechanism for reporting progress It was.

In the wake of the United Nations “Climate Action Summit” last week, several banks, including ABN Amuro <ABNd.AS>, have announced that they will introduce measures to increase investment transparency to assess responses to climate change.

Another group of more than 130 banks, such as Deutsche Bank <DBKGn.DE>, Citigroup <CN>, and Barclays [BARCR.UL], has also announced that they will adopt the principles of responsible banking backed up by the United Nations.

But Mr. Christianson pointed out, “Banks need to raise their goals, engage in climate change measures and come up with ambitious and transparent efforts.”