Barclays Bank has announced that it will stop directly funding new gas and oil projects. A new Climate Change Statement from the bank revealed that Barclays will require its clients in the energy sector to produce decarbonization or energy-transition strategies by the start of 2024.
The United Kingdom-based bank also released a new Transition Finance Framework that outlined its conditions for classifying funding for decarbonizing high-emission industries as “transition.” The new framework is part of Barclays’ efforts to reach its goal of facilitating $1 trillion in sustainable and transition finance by the decade’s end. A statement from the bank acknowledged Barclays’ involvement with stakeholders such as ShareAction in creating the new climate transition policy.
Barclays is now the latest in a growing number of major banks in Europe that have committed to exiting new fossil-fuel financing efforts. Along with Barclays, Societe Generale, BNP Paribas, HSBC and Crédit Agricole have introduced similar transition policies in recent years. Shortly after HBSC announced its policy in late December, ShareAction led a targeted campaign at each of the other banking institutions which, alongside their investors, represent more than $1.5 trillion in assets.
The targeted campaign called on the banks to commit to ending the financing of new fossil-fuel projects in 2024. A similar campaign led by ShareAction targeted Barclays bank’s AGM last year and called on the bank to put an end to the financing of new gas and oil projects. As per the new policy, Barclays’ energy-sector clients will be subject to a host of expectations and restrictions, such as halting project finance or any direct funding to energy clients in upstream gas and oil expansion projects as well as cutting financing to new clients with more than 10% of planned gas and oil capex for expansion.
The new policy would also require Barclays to significantly reduce financing to nondiversified energy clients involved in long lead-time upstream gas and oil projects expansion and call on energy clients to set 2030 methane reduction targets as well as 2025 transition and decarbonization targets; thr policy also calls for ending routine flaring by the end of the decade. Furthermore, clients and projects in areas such as thermal coal mining and power, nonconventional oil and gas, and mountaintop-removal coal mining will be subject to a series of restrictions.
Barclays’ Group head of sustainability Laura Barlow says addressing the climate-change issue is a “critical and complex challenge,” but she noted that the bank was working with its energy clients to aid and support decarbonization efforts in a just and orderly manner that addresses energy security.
Entities such as Reflex Advanced Materials Corp. (CSE: RFLX) (OTCQB: RFLXF) are doing their part to contribute to decarbonization by exploring for and producing the needed strategic metals vital to green-energy use.
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