HSBC:

PROUD OWNERS OF DIRTY COAL

HSBC, one of the world’s ten biggest banks, has long been addicted to coal.

Despite some recent steps forward, the bank continues to serve as the financial lifeblood of the most climate wrecking industry on the planet.

One of the many ways in which HSBC continues to support this dirty industry is, as we find in this study, through the ownership stakes it holds in companies building new coal power stations around the world. If these projects go ahead, they will generate the equivalent of about 37 years of the United Kingdom’s current annual emissions in carbon dioxide (CO2).

That’s why, in the lead-up to its April 2020 annual general meeting (AGM), shareholders, customers and the broader community wrote to HSBC telling the bank to align all forms of investment activity with the goals of the Paris Agreement to keep global warming to below 1.5 degrees.

In response to these enquiries and confirming the findings of this study, HSBC acknowledged that it indeed owns stakes in coal companies. At the same time, the bank also announced that it will no longer directly fund new coal-fired power plants anywhere in the world.

While this is a significant step forward, achieving the aims of the Paris Agreement means much more than ruling out direct project finance for coal plants. At a minimum, it means withholding financial support for the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, covering every form of finance including arranging loans and bonds, providing advisory services and owning stakes in fossil fuel companies.

Disappointingly, despite acknowledging its continued financial support for coal companies, HSBC did not formulate a plan to address these forms of investment.

Please help keep up the pressure by calling upon HSBC to do the right thing by withholding financial support for companies and projects that would expand the scale of the fossil fuel industry.

You can take action by filling out this form, which will send a message to HSBC. To learn more, continue on to the study below.

Take Action

Complete this form to send a message to HSBC following its 2020 AGM, calling upon the bank to withhold financing activities to companies and projects that would expand the scale of the fossil fuel industry.

Name*
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I am (if applicable)
- A HSBC customer
- A HSBC shareholder
Subject
Your Message to HSBC
Dear HSBC, As a HSBC customer, I am writing to acknowledge the progress you have made by ruling out directly financing new coal power plants in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam, but to also express my concern that HSBC remains a significant supporter of companies expanding the scale of the fossil fuel industry, including new coal power stations. HSBC has consistently said it is on board with the goals of the Paris Agreement to contain global warming to 1.5ºC. However, I have been made aware that HSBC supports the expansion of the fossil fuel industry by many means other than direct project finance, including via fixed income, institutional investment, corporate lending and advisory services. This activity is inconsistent with your stated support for the Paris Agreement. For example, I recently learned that HSBC owns stakes in many companies trying to build new coal power plants. I find this deeply cynical and hypocritical. For HSBC to say it would not finance new coal power plants, but then have a financial interest in the very companies trying to build those power stations is inconsistent beyond explanation and I feel like you have attempted to dupe the public about HSBC’s approach to climate change. Clearly, HSBC is already aware of this issue, as you acknowledged in your response to shareholders following the 2020 AGM by stating “A proportion of HSBC Global Asset Management’s funds, including index funds and ETFs which replicate the components of an index, include coal companies”. We are well past the point where any new coal power plant can be built in order to have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5ºC. Investing in companies that are trying to expand the scale of the coal industry is an attempt to profit off the failure of the Paris Agreement, and completely unacceptable. I urge HSBC to immediately formulate and publish plans to align all investment activity with the Paris Agreement, starting by immediately withholding financing activities to companies and projects that would expand the scale of the fossil fuel industry. Sincerely
Your Message to HSBC
Dear HSBC, As a HSBC shareholder, I am writing to acknowledge the progress you have made by ruling out directly financing new coal power plants in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam, but to also express my concern that HSBC remains a significant supporter of companies expanding the scale of the fossil fuel industry, including new coal power stations. HSBC has consistently said it is on board with the goals of the Paris Agreement to contain global warming to 1.5ºC. However, I have been made aware that HSBC supports the expansion of the fossil fuel industry by many means other than direct project finance, including via fixed income, institutional investment, corporate lending and advisory services. This activity is inconsistent with your stated support for the Paris Agreement. For example, I recently learned that HSBC owns stakes in many companies trying to build new coal power plants. I find this deeply cynical and hypocritical. For HSBC to say it would not finance new coal power plants, but then have a financial interest in the very companies trying to build those power stations is inconsistent beyond explanation and I feel like you have attempted to dupe the public about HSBC’s approach to climate change. Clearly, HSBC is already aware of this issue, as you acknowledged in your response to shareholders following the 2020 AGM by stating “A proportion of HSBC Global Asset Management’s funds, including index funds and ETFs which replicate the components of an index, include coal companies”. We are well past the point where any new coal power plant can be built in order to have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5ºC. Investing in companies that are trying to expand the scale of the coal industry is an attempt to profit off the failure of the Paris Agreement, and completely unacceptable. I urge HSBC to immediately formulate and publish plans to align all investment activity with the Paris Agreement, starting by immediately withholding financing activities to companies and projects that would expand the scale of the fossil fuel industry. Sincerely
Your Message to HSBC
Dear HSBC, As a HSBC customer and shareholder, I am writing to acknowledge the progress you have made by ruling out directly financing new coal power plants in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam, but to also express my concern that HSBC remains a significant supporter of companies expanding the scale of the fossil fuel industry, including new coal power stations. HSBC has consistently said it is on board with the goals of the Paris Agreement to contain global warming to 1.5ºC. However, I have been made aware that HSBC supports the expansion of the fossil fuel industry by many means other than direct project finance, including via fixed income, institutional investment, corporate lending and advisory services. This activity is inconsistent with your stated support for the Paris Agreement. For example, I recently learned that HSBC owns stakes in many companies trying to build new coal power plants. I find this deeply cynical and hypocritical. For HSBC to say it would not finance new coal power plants, but then have a financial interest in the very companies trying to build those power stations is inconsistent beyond explanation and I feel like you have attempted to dupe the public about HSBC’s approach to climate change. Clearly, HSBC is already aware of this issue, as you acknowledged in your response to shareholders following the 2020 AGM by stating “A proportion of HSBC Global Asset Management’s funds, including index funds and ETFs which replicate the components of an index, include coal companies”. We are well past the point where any new coal power plant can be built in order to have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5ºC. Investing in companies that are trying to expand the scale of the coal industry is an attempt to profit off the failure of the Paris Agreement, and completely unacceptable. I urge HSBC to immediately formulate and publish plans to align all investment activity with the Paris Agreement, starting by immediately withholding financing activities to companies and projects that would expand the scale of the fossil fuel industry. Sincerely
Your Message to HSBC
Dear HSBC, I am writing to acknowledge the progress you have made by ruling out directly financing new coal power plants in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam, but to also express my concern that HSBC remains a significant supporter of companies expanding the scale of the fossil fuel industry, including new coal power stations. HSBC has consistently said it is on board with the goals of the Paris Agreement to contain global warming to 1.5ºC. However, I have been made aware that HSBC supports the expansion of the fossil fuel industry by many means other than direct project finance, including via fixed income, institutional investment, corporate lending and advisory services. This activity is inconsistent with your stated support for the Paris Agreement. For example, I recently learned that HSBC owns stakes in many companies trying to build new coal power plants. I find this deeply cynical and hypocritical. For HSBC to say it would not finance new coal power plants, but then have a financial interest in the very companies trying to build those power stations is inconsistent beyond explanation and I feel like you have attempted to dupe the public about HSBC’s approach to climate change. Clearly, HSBC is already aware of this issue, as you acknowledged in your response to shareholders following the 2020 AGM by stating “A proportion of HSBC Global Asset Management’s funds, including index funds and ETFs which replicate the components of an index, include coal companies”. We are well past the point where any new coal power plant can be built in order to have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5ºC. Investing in companies that are trying to expand the scale of the coal industry is an attempt to profit off the failure of the Paris Agreement, and completely unacceptable. I urge HSBC to immediately formulate and publish plans to align all investment activity with the Paris Agreement, starting by immediately withholding financing activities to companies and projects that would expand the scale of the fossil fuel industry. Sincerely
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Contents

Lending to coal power plants
HSBC owns coal companies
Hypocrisy
Case Studies
What needs to happen
New leadership, new opportunity for change?
Methodology

Lending to coal power plants is just the tip of the iceberg

Banks excluding lending to new coal power plants is commonplace these days. As of February 2020, 28 banks worldwide had ruled out finance to new coal power plants anywhere in the world, several moving to phase out exposure to the coal power sector altogether.

Following its April 2020 AGM, HSBC updated its energy policy and now counts itself as one of these banks. While this is a positive step forward, it is in many ways a distraction from the larger role the bank plays as a financial supporter of the coal industry.

Through lending to companies building new coal power stations, arranging and buying bonds for the same companies, and even holding equity stakes in them, HSBC is providing the financial lifeblood to an industry that needs to be rapidly phased out and replaced with renewable energy if we’re to have any chance of keeping global warming under control.

And this is before we consider HSBC’s exposure to the oil and gas sectors, and other industries with a major carbon footprint.

HSBC owns coal companies

This study considers only one type of investment: HSBC’s equity stakes in companies building new coal power stations. We are taking an extremely narrow view of HSBC’s total support for the coal industry, limiting this study to a handful of companies building new coal power plants. Yet we still find the bank exposed to a gargantuan number of new coal power stations that, if built, would prevent us from meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement.

HSBC holds stakes in 18 out of 33 listed companies within the world’s top 100 developers of new coal power stations, companies that are attempting to build another 80 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity around the world. If these projects go ahead, they will generate 13.4 billion tonnes of CO2 over their lifetimes, equivalent to about 37 years of the United Kingdom’s current annual emissions.

These projects range from those that have merely been announced, to ones moving through a planning or approval process, to projects under construction. Over half of this new coal power plant capacity is under construction, effectively locking it in.

13.4 billion

tonnes of CO2 emissions will be generated by these coal power plants if they go ahead.

Location of pipeline coal power plants HSBC is exposed to through institutional investment

Hypocrisy

Evidently, HSBC is well aware of the threat climate change poses. In 2016 the bank claimed to be building into its business the aims of the Paris Agreement, holding the increase in average temperatures to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.

The bank has also been quick to lecture others about climate change. In June 2018 HSBC’s group head of insurance Bryce Johns told a conference in Singapore:

“We simply can’t afford to see large, sprawling cities, powered by coal and connected by roads full of cars driven by internal combustion engines. What we need are well-designed urban developments that use clean energy and with efficient mass transit systems.”

Yet HSBC has a financial stake in companies attempting to deliver this fossil fuelled future. Given we are well past the point where any new coal power station can be considered compatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement, for HSBC to be invested in companies pursuing new coal power capacity equivalent to triple that of a major coal country like Indonesia, is reaching a level of hypocrisy that would break the scale.

Case Studies

According to the Global Coal Plant Tracker, the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) is pursuing another 9.5 GW of new coal power plants. According to filings lodged since June 2019, HSBC had US$5 million invested in KEPCO.

However, KEPCO may be about to add another 3.2 GW of additional coal power capacity to this total, as it considered buying stakes in the proposed Vung Ang 2 coal power plant in Vietnam and the Jawa 9 and 10 project in Indonesia. Aside from their obviously unacceptable climate impact, both projects are riddled with other risks.

The Environmental and Social Impact Assessment for Vung Ang 2, reveals that the project has failed to adequately consult local residents, nor consider the cumulative impacts of the pollution it would add to the region. If built, Vung Ang 2 would sit next to a pre-existing coal power plant that is blamed for coating the nearby town in dust, while also part of the same industrial complex as the Formosa steelworks, which famously caused a toxic spill in 2018 that dissipated the region’s fishing community. There was also no alternatives assessment conducted for the Vung Ang 2 coal power plant, which was owned jointly by Mitsubishi Corporation in Japan and Hong Kong’s CLP until the latter pulled out of the project in December 2019, citing a new corporate strategy of aligning with the goals of being net zero emissions by 2050, leaving no room to build new coal power plants.

The Jawa 9 and 10 project is proposed to be built in the already heavily industrialised Banten province, less than 100 kilometres from Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta. Such are the concerns related to air pollution from Jawa 9 and 10, it was named in a lawsuit brought by residents to the provincial government in 2019.

If KEPCO invests in these projects it will in turn expose HSBC to the myriad environmental, social and financial risks these new coal power stations would bring.

According to information filed since October 2019 HSBC had US$16 million invested in Sumitomo Corporation, which is currently attempting to build another 5.7 GW of new coal power plants, according to the Global Coal Plant Tracker. This includes the 2.4 GW Matarbari power station in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, as well as the 1