Four years since Paris

In 2015 at the United Nations climate conference in Paris, leaders signed an agreement including a commitment to “making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development”.

The UK will next year host next year’s annual climate conference, billed as the most important since Paris because world leaders are meant to upgrade pledges made in 2015.

Greig Aitken, coal campaigner at BankTrack, told Unearthed: “One year out from the UK’s hosting of the UN Climate Summit, if Barclays, HSBC and Standard Chartered don’t act rapidly to rein in their financing of coal expansion companies, the UK government should take steps or risk turning up in Glasgow with coal dust on their faces thanks to our big fossil banks.

“Compared to their European counterparts, UK banks have stubbornly failed for several years to adequately respond to the worsening climate emergency by at least introducing policy restrictions to significantly curb their sponsoring of coal expansion around the world. Cosmetic policy tweaks no longer cut it.”

The data, which was gathered from financial databases at Bloomberg and Refinitiv and from company reporting, is part of a bigger report that Urgewald and BankTrack plan to publish on the financing of new coal plants globally. They shared the UK information with Unearthed in advance of the final report.

It is based on Urgewald’s list of 258 companies with known coal plant expansion plans, 51 of which received financial support from UK banks.

Between 2017 and 2019, the Finnish state-owned energy company Fortum received more funding from UK banks than any other company with coal expansion plans. It received £2.5 billion from Barclays, mainly in loans, and £1.7 billion in loans from Royal Bank of Scotland, which is itself state-owned.

Fortum recently agreed to take control of the German energy company Uniper in a 2.3 billion euro deal, meaning it will take over the company’s numerous coal plants.

According to Urgewald’s data, Fortum makes only 5% of its revenue from coal and only 3% of the power it produces is from coal. However, Uniper is involved in a controversial plan to build a new coal plant in Germany.

The plant, Datteln 4, is controversial because of the German government’s plan to abandon coal as an energy source by 2038. According to a report from Reuters, the 1.1 gigawatt plant will be allowed to enter service despite the government’s commission recommending that no new coal plants be brought into use.

A spokesperson for Fortum said: “We don’t invest in Uniper because of coal but despite coal. Our goal is to create a leader in Europe’s energy transition. The energy transition will require significant investments in the coming decades not only in renewables, but also in gas, energy storage, and other flexibility solutions to provide security of supply.”

A Uniper spokesperson said that Fortum’s finances were a matter for Fortum but added that the Datteln 4 project had not received any “bilateral loans” from UK banks.