Standard Chartered –
“Here For Good”?

Find out why Standard Chartered are the UK’s hidden climate villains. 

Standard Chartered’s London HQ. Image credit: Cobaltblue25

Standard Chartered –
“Here For Good”?

Find out why Standard Chartered are the UK’s hidden climate villains. 

Standard Chartered’s London HQ. Image credit: Cobaltblue25

Standard Chartered is a key bank funding the Adani group, the company behind the disastrous Adani Carmichael coal project in Australia. The Adani Carmichael coal mine and the Galilee coal basin it will open up are on such a huge scale that they put global climate targets in danger. Carmichael coal could emit 4.6 billion tonnes of CO2 – over ten times the UK’s entire annual emissions. By backing Adani, Standard Chartered is complicit in the environmental destruction and indigenous rights violations that the Carmichael project is causing.

Standard Chartered billboard

Protesters put up a billboard in Liverpool, protesting Standard Chartered’s sponsorship of Liverpool Football Club. Image credit: Brandalism

Standard Chartered’s weak climate policies

Standard Chartered ruled out direct financing for new coal plants and mines in 2018, but continues to allow financing for coal companies.

The bank has said from 2025, it will start to phase out finance for coal companies, starting with companies who make the highest proportion of their revenue from coal. But this phase-out is far too slow and means the bank is putting off any serious action on phasing out coal until the middle of this decade, and it will still be able to fund highly diversified coal companies in 2030 and beyond. With this weak policy, the bank is lagging behind its competitors such as Barclays and BNP Paribas.

As well as this, the bank has no restrictions on its ability to fund oil and gas. The International Energy Agency has said that no new fossil fuel extraction projects can be permitted as of 2021, in order to meet the ‘Net Zero by 2050’ goal that Standard Chartered supports.

Without serious policies to rapidly bring the funding of fossil fuels to an end, Standard Chartered will continue to be a climate villain, on the wrong side of history.