Deutsche Bank has announced its new Fossil Fuels Policy, which provides a dramatically revised framework for the investment banking firm’s business activities involving oil, gas and coal worldwide.
In a statement released on July 27 the bank unveiled its plans to end global business activities in coal mining by 2025 at the latest in order to help drive the transformation to a sustainable world economy.
Deutsche Bank also pledged that by the end of this year, it will have reviewed all its existing business activities involving coal power in Europe and the US with regard to clients’ diversification plans. Its review in Asia will begin in 2022.
With immediate effect the bank will no longer finance any new oil and gas projects in the Arctic region or oil sand projects. And by the end of this year, it will have reviewed all its existing business activities in the sector.
In addition, the bank said it had signed the so-called Equator Principles, a risk management framework for assessing the environmental and social risk of financing projects. The principles ensure that strict environmental and social standards are applied during project development and construction process, including follow-up monitoring.
The Fossil Fuels Policy will help to fulfil the German financial sector’s collective commitment to climate action, which the bank signed last month, pledging to align its credit portfolios with the goals of the Paris Agreement of 2015. This includes a commitment to introduce methods of measuring climate impact by the end of 2022 and then regulate them in accordance with national and international climate targets.
CEO Christian Sewing, who also chairs Deutsche Bank’s Sustainability Council, said: “Our new Fossil Fuels Policy sets us a strict framework for our business activities in the oil, gas and coal sector. In its current form, the Policy sets us ambitious targets and enables us to help our long-standing clients with their own transformation. It will allow us to play our part in protecting the climate and helping the EU to achieve its goal of being climate neutral by 2050.”
