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Comedian Aisling Bea is 1 of the personage run backers
By Beth Timmins
Business reporter, BBC News
Stephen Fry, Aisling Bea and Emma Thompson are among celebrities calling connected the 5 of the UK's biggest High Street banks to halt financing caller oil, state and ember projects.
It follows disapproval that HSBC, Barclays, Santander, NatWest and Lloyds are backing "fossil substance expansion" contempt making greenish pledges.
Businesses and charities similar Greenpeace besides backmost the campaign.
HSBC and Barclays said they were helping their clients to chopped emissions.
The run points to probe by biology foundation Rainforest Action Network, which claims that betwixt 2016 and 2021, HSBC, Barclays, Santander, NatWest and Lloyds funnelled astir $368bn (£298bn) towards the fossil substance industry.
It added that successful the aforesaid clip period, the lenders financed the 50 companies making the biggest investments successful lipid and state projects to the tune of $141bn.
It added that portion HSBC and LLoyds had made "welcome caller announcements" connected stopping nonstop concern for caller fossil substance enlargement since then, "there is simply a agelong mode to go".
"HSBC was this period recovered to person provided $340m to a institution opening a caller ember excavation successful Germany," it said.
The campaign, which is besides backed by histrion Mark Rylance and instrumentalist Brian Eno, urges the nationalist to motion an unfastened missive asking the banks to halt straight financing projects that grow fossil substance use, oregon extremity relationships with clients that do.
The campaign's founder, filmmaker Richard Curtis, said helium wanted to enactment "a occurrence nether the banks".
"It's wide that caller lipid and state fields are not lone hugely damaging to the planet, but they're besides wildly unpopular with the public," helium added.
Almost 1 3rd of HSBC, Barclays, Santander, NatWest and Lloyds' customers surveyed by the run said that they would power slope if they discovered that theirs was financing the enlargement of fossil substance projects.
Over 85% of customers astatine the 5 banks surveyed said they did not deliberation that their slope was doing capable to tackle the clime crisis.
TV presenter Chris Packham CBE said that fiscal institutions had an "enormous ethical and motivation responsibility" to commencement withdrawing backing from organisations that damaged the clime and biodiversity.
'Significant impact'
High Street banks person made steps to loosen their ties to environmentally damaging companies.
- HSBC told the BBC it nary longer provided caller concern oregon proposal for caller lipid and state fields. It added that "supporting clients successful high-emitting sectors to decarbonise volition person the astir important interaction connected emissions reduction".
- Barclays said it would trim its enactment for "carbon-intensive" companies implicit clip if they were "unable oregon unwilling to trim oregon destruct their emissions". Since January 2019, it has not provided loans for the improvement oregon enlargement of coal-fired powerfulness stations oregon greenfield thermal ember mines.
- NatWest Group said the slope nary longer lent to oregon underwrote ember oregon large lipid and state producers "unless they person a credible modulation program successful enactment with the Paris Agreement". It said this had resulted successful a £1bn driblet successful fossil substance financing astatine the bank.
- Santander said it is "fully committed" to supporting the modulation to nett zero and prohibits the financing of caller upstream lipid clients and projects.
Britain's biggest home bank, Lloyds, announced it would halt "direct" financing to make caller lipid and state fields successful October. The BBC has besides contacted Lloyds for comment.
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, 197 countries agreed to effort to support somesthesia rises "well below" 1.5C to debar the worst impacts of clime change.
Experts accidental that to execute this, countries indispensable person nett zero emissions by 2050.
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