Big Banks Commit Big Money to Climate

At Active Impact, our mission is to help facilitate the flow of capital to environmental and social good. We are encouraged to see signs that big financial institutions may be looking to also become more aligned with that mission. A recent article by Bill McKibben of 360.org published in the New Yorker highlighted the fact that the money provided by big banks to finance fossil fuel projects was the "the oxygen on which the fire of global warming burns". The point was that GHG emission reduction requires a commitment from the banks to stop financing big projects that pollute. In September, the Global Alliance on Banking Values announced that over 50 participating financial institutions representing $2.9 trillion in assets had committed to measure and disclose carbon emissions associated with their loans and investments. This is a positive first step to reducing such lending activity. Canadian banks are also promising to commit to environmental sustainability initiatives. For example, CIBC recently promised $150B for environmental and sustainable financing activities by 2027 and BMO committed $400B to sustainable financing activities by 2025, including the intention to create a $250M impact investment fund to find and scale solutions to sustainability problems. Capital diverted from negative to positive use will be a massive catalyst for change!

---