‘low carbon’, the poor ratio of French bank financing, according to an NGO

Environmental protection NGO Reclaim Finance confirmed on Monday that only 17.3% of the financing provided to European oil companies by four major French banks (BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Société Générale and BPCE) to European oil companies between 2020 and 2023 finances projects. “low carbon”. The major French banks “claim to support the transition when they finance the oil and gas giants. The reality is very different: TotalEnergies and other major energy companies have the vast majority of their funding going towards their fossil fuel activities.estimates Lucie Pinson, founder and director of Reclaim Finance, quoted in a press release.

The NGO based itself on data from the financial agency Bloomberg and the Banking on Climate Chaos report that was to be published on May 13. It finds $7.1 billion in funding for operations “low carbon” from BP, Eni, Equinor, Repsol and TotalEnergies over the past four years, compared to $34.2 billion in financing for their fossil fuel activities, mainly from BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole. At the request of AFP, BNP Paribas reviews the data “incomplete” and states that these do not reflect current funding policies. Crédit Agricole in turn identifies this “wrong interpretations” and highlights the lack of bankable projects.

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“Ambitious goals”

Societe Generale “Would like to point out that the bank has set ambitious targets for decarbonising the oil and gas sector in its strategic roadmap” while BPCE declined to comment. The argument for supporting the transition of oil and gas giants is regularly put forward by banks to continue working with them. Reclaim Finance is also calling on the banks again “Stop all untargeted support for these companies as long as they develop new fossil fuel projects”.

“Only targeted financing for ‘low-carbon’ projects can be justified and guarantee the absence of support for fossil fuel expansion”, Lucie Pinson underlines. THE “low carbon” is defined in the study as “all non-fossil activities of the company, this broad definition includes sustainable energies (solar, wind) but also activities that are harmful to the environment, such as bioenergy”.