Greenpeace slams banks for coal support

Australia’s big four banks financed more than $5 billion-worth of coal  projects in the past five years while trumpeting their green credentials, but Bendigo and Adelaide Bank (ASX: BEN) and credit union Mecu had no money in coal, Greenpeace said.

ANZ (ASX: ANZ), National Australia Bank (ASX: NAB), Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) and Westpac (ASX: WBC) lent more than six times the amount of money to coal mining, power stations and exporting than to renewable energy projects, according to the environment group. In its latest campaign, Greenpeace is urging customers to tell their banks to “clean up their act”.

But ANZ and Westpac stopped short of ruling out fresh investment in  coal-fired generation, telling Ethical Investor that financing will be skewed towards those projects with an emphasis on energy efficiency and clean energy. NAB and CBA did not provide a response.

ANZ, which recently topped the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, was the biggest financier of the coal sector, the report by consultants Profundo found. It put $650 million into coalfired power stations, $309 million into coal ports and $727 million into coal mining in the five-year period.

Greenpeace’s John Hepburn said ANZ was also the lead arranger of finance for Australia’s newest coal power station, Bluewaters II, at Collie, east of Bunbury, in Western Australia. “While they spend a huge amount of time and money creating an image of sustainability and environmental concern, they are quietly using billions of dollars of Australians’ money to pollute our future,” Hepburn said.

(Source: Ethical Investor Magazine October/November 2010)