VANCOUVER—A new report released Thursday has named the big five Canadian banks as top investors of Canada’s fossil fuel sector between 2010 and 2015, a consequence that’s alarming researchers given a UN climate report urging countries to take more ambitious action.

The report titled Who Owns Canada’s Fossil-Fuel Sector was issued by the Corporate Mapping Project, a joint initiative by the University of Victoria, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Parkland Institute, with funding in part from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Co-author and University of Victoria sociology professor William Carroll said in a statement that Canada’s fossil fuel industry is “in the hands of a few major players … that have an interest in the sector’s continued growth and the economic power” that shapes its future.

Using shareholder and revenue data from Orbis, a company with information on companies worldwide, Carroll found that the top 25 owners accounted for 40 per cent of the total revenues from the fossil fuel industry between 2010 to 2015.

In this period, the top two investors were Exxon Mobil Corp with 6.57 per cent in average shares and the Royal Bank of Canada with 3.35 per cent in average shares. Within the top five largest owners, two out of three were Canadian. Other than RBC, the Desmarais Family Residuary Trust held 2.46 per cent in shares.

Carroll told StarMetro that given a “looming climate crisis” and the 12-year window to limit global warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees outlined in the UN climate report by 91 authors, these investments means there’s “inertia” towards developing cleaner alternatives.

Other findings in the report showed that Toronto Dominion Bank came in 6th with 2.03 per cent of average shares, and the Bank of Montreal in 9th with 1.98 per cent of shares.

Greg Flato, a senior scientist with Environment Canada’s climate research division and one of the authors of the UN climate report, said emissions from all sectors will have to reduce rapidly in order to keep temperatures from exceeding 1.5 degrees.

“In particular, the energy that is produced and consumed from fossil fuels has to change, and there has to be a transition towards renewable energy sources that don’t lead to greenhouse gas emissions,” Flato said, adding that the impacts of climate change will increase as global temperatures rise.

In August 2017, RBC launched the Vision Fossil Fuel Global Equity Fund to meet demands from investors looking to incorporate climate-related concerns in their portfolios.

In a pamphlet named “Fossil Fuel Divestment,” the bank stated that “fossil- fuel companies are not ignoring the potential impact of climate regulation; rather, they are actively monitoring the risk as it evolves and are incorporating it into their planning and business models.”

RBC did not respond in time for this publication.

—With files from Ainslie Cruickshank

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