ANZ, which claims to be committed to net-zero emissions by 2050 and the goals of the Paris Agreement, today revealed significant increases in the emissions intensity of its power generation portfolio and its overall oil and gas exposure.
In FY22, ANZ increased its exposure to upstream oil and gas extraction, one of the reasons cited for the increase was “customers expanding their distribution to meet critical supply requirements due to the energy crisis in Europe. This has resulted in increased usage of short-term facilities provided to key customers to assist with funding of these oil and gas cargoes and associated activities.”
By providing the funding its oil and gas producing customers need to expand their distribution, ANZ is once again failing to live up to its net-zero commitments. Oil and gas companies have benefited from soaring prices as a result of the energy crisis, and are using Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as justification for developing new projects that are completely incompatible with net-zero. Hours after ANZ’s full year announcement, the IEA published its World Energy Outlook, which shows gas supply declining more than 20% over the next decade in its net zero by 2050 scenario.
In the last year, ANZ has been more than happy to finance companies expanding the oil and gas sector, including corporate finance for Woodside, Santos, Cooper Energy, Beach Energy, and APA. It also provided project finance for the attempting-to-expand Ichthys LNG Project and for Global Infrastructure Partners’ acquisition of a stake in the climate-wrecking Pluto 2 LNG Train, part of Woodside’s Scarbrough-Pluto project.
The full year results announcement also revealed the emissions intensity of ANZ’s power generation portfolio (kgCO2-e/MWh) increased by a whopping 47% above its 2030 target pathway. In 2021, ANZ committed to “further reducing the carbon intensity of our electricity generation lending portfolio by only directly financing renewables and low carbon gas projects by 2030.” However, this is not borne out in its results which have seen the intensity of its power generation portfolio grow for two years in a row, and indicate ANZ is not interested in meeting its own targets.
This year, a critical shareholder vote will be held, asking ANZ to demonstrate how its financing will not enable the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. These results only serve to underscore the need for shareholders, customers and the wider community to hold ANZ accountable for the climate impacts of its financing.
This is what it looks like when a bank (@ANZ_AU) doesn't care about its #climatechange targets. pic.twitter.com/i5s0Z2RVh2
— Market Forces (@market_forces) October 26, 2022
