Citing their climate commitments made during the Paris climate conference, the rise of renewable energy and the rapidly crumbling image of the coal industry, Deutsche Bank today announced they would begin to pull out of coal project financing.

Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank,  plans not to provide any new loans for coal mines and the construction of new coal power plants.  Spiegel Online reports that Deutsche Bank will also phase out existing coal financing but didn’t specify a time frame beyond a “20% decrease over the next three years”.

However the announcement only covers ‘project financing’ which accounts for about 10% of the bank’s coal-related financing.   The new commitment does not affect the bank’s ability to keep lending money to coal companies, rather than specific mining projects.

Whilst this is an important small step forward for the divestment movement in Germany, which has been calling on institutions to drop all investments in all fossil fuels, it stops far short of meeting the intentions of the Paris Agreement.   German NGO Urgewald has calculated that Deutsche Bank is among the top-ten largest coal financiers globally.    According to the details available on this announcement, around 90% of its loans relating to coal will be unaffected. 

“The announcement from Deutsche Bank is far from good enough but it shows how much of a liability the disastrous image of the coal industry has become. The divestment and climate movement will keep on chipping away at the fossil fuel industry’s power to carry out their climate-destroying business plans. We’ll leave banks with no choice but to pull out of coal, oil and gas for real.” Tine Langkamp, Fossil Free Deutschland campaigner.

Not exactly fulfilling the Paris Agreement then:

Why not reply to their tweet and let them know what you think?

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