Top US banks face little investor pressure on fossil-fuel financing

Climate activists were dealt a blow on Tuesday as top U.S. bank investors showed only minimal support for shareholder resolutions calling for the lenders to wind down new fossil fuel financing. The resolutions won just 10% support of votes cast at Citigroup Inc and 7% at Bank of America, according to bank executives. A similar resolution at Wells Fargo & Co was also rejected, though executives did not give an exact tally. The phase-out resolutions, proposed by the Sierra Club Foundation, called for new bank policies to step back from lending and underwriting new fossil fuel exploration and development. They were seen as an important test of investor sentiment after similar ones fared badly last year.

Despite the setback, there were other signs that investors remain concerned about climate matters. A resolution calling for Citi to report on its concern for the rights of Indigenous peoples, which had an environmental component, won 31% support, typically enough to draw boardroom attention.

Sierra Club representative Jessye Waxman said in a statement that the results showed most investors are not aligning their proxy votes with their environmental positions. “As the climate crisis worsens, investors must move beyond calls for disclosure only and demand companies take real steps to align their business practices with their stated climate commitments,” Waxman said.

All three major U.S. banks had opposed the resolutions, citing their other efforts to achieve net-zero by 2050. Citi CEO Jane Fraser said during her bank’s meeting that while global emissions must be reduced, “we simply don’t yet have affordable alternatives at the scale and reliability that is required” to move national economies off of fossil fuels.

It’s clear that the big banks are going to keep financing fossil-based energy development, even though that is enabling the growing systemic risks and costs that are already hitting us from climate change,” said Heidi Welsh, executive director of the Sustainable Investments Institute, which tracks such votes.

Reporting by Ross Kerber; Additional reporting by Tatiana Bautzer, Niket Nishant and Nupur Anand; Editing by David Gregorio and Josie Kao

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