Stand.earth on Royal Bank of Canada's latest climate commitments

TORONTO, Oct. 26, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Royal Bank of Canada – Canada's #1 fossil fuel financing bank – announced its latest climate targets, essentially more greenwashing as the bank continues to bankroll high-polluting sectors like fossil fuels. The bank released only 'intensity-based' targets for energy sector clients, essentially a license to continue to pollute. 

Richard Brooks, Stand.earth Climate Finance Program Director, said:

"There's a dictionary-official definition for RBC's climate targets: it's called greenwashing. With RBC continuing to bankroll polluters, these pledges are just more smoke and mirrors. While people across Canada bear the brunt of fires, floods, and deadly heat, Canada's #1 fossil fuel-financing bank continues to pour gas on the flames, bankrolling gas, tar sands, oil, and coal. Instead of financing Indigenous rights-violating fracked gas pipelines, RBC has the opportunity to reinvest in climate-safe solutions and truly live into its climate rhetoric."

Canada's Competition Bureau recently opened an investigation into RBC's allegedly misleading climate advertising.

Bank of Montreal set absolute emissions reduction targets for energy sector clients. Last week, Deutsche Bank, French bank SocGen, and the UK's Lloyds all released absolute emissions targets for oil and gas clients. Citibank, the world's second largest fossil fuel financier, set an absolute target for energy sector clients of 29% by 2030. Even these targets, already inadequate, were not met by RBC today. 

"By continuing to pump billions into fossil fuels and failing to set science-based targets for reducing financed emissions, RBC is out of step with Canada's climate plans," Brooks added. "We can't advance towards meeting our national goals and global responsibility if the country's largest bank is dragging us backwards."

RBC remains one of the largest funders behind new fossil fuel projects, including Indigenous rights-violating pipelines like Coastal GasLink through unceded Wet'suwet'en land, and co-lead arranger and financer of the latest $10 billion loan to build the over-budget, much-delayed TransMountain pipeline. 

RBC joined the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ) a year ago, promising to align the bank's lending and investment portfolios with a science-based pathway to net zero by 2050. Ahead of COP27, RBC risks getting booted from the network as they push back against global financial standards for climate risk.

SOURCE Stand.earth