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Bank AGM Season 2024

The 2024 Australian bank AGM season is done and dusted, with one key takeaway: Big portions of the banks’ shareholders, including many of Australia’s top super funds, want to see the banks live up to their climate commitments and stop financing companies that plan to grow their fossil fuel production.

An average of more than a quarter of ANZ, NAB and Westpac shareholder votes went in favour of Market Forces’ resolutions calling on the banks to exclude finance to fossil fuel companies that don’t have Paris-aligned transition plans. This is hugely significant given the boards of all the banks recommended against these resolutions and 95% of shareholder votes typically go in line with board recommendations.

2025 is a big year for Australia’s big four banks. ANZ, NAB and Westpac have all set policies which require their major fossil fuel clients to have climate transition plans in place by October this year. Theoretically, that means if a fossil fuel company cannot demonstrate on paper that it has a plan to scale down its emissions in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement they could be ineligible to receive financial support from Australia’s largest lenders.

But these policies still contain plenty of loopholes that could see the big four continue to pour money into climate wrecking companies even beyond the October ‘deadline’.

We’re putting pressure on the banks to fix these loopholes to ensure they don’t give another cent to the world’s climate wreckers, and we need your help!

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Tell ANZ, NAB and Westpac to close their fossil fuel finance gaps and end their support for climate wreckers once and for all!

Shareholders send Australia’s climate laggard a wake-up call

2024 AGM result: 27.2% in favour

  • ANZ held its 2024 AGM in Melbourne on the 19th of December.
  • 27.2% of ANZ shareholder votes were cast in favour of a Market Forces resolution calling for the bank to stop financing fossil fuel companies without Paris-aligned transition plans.
  • ANZ continued to defend its woefully inadequate fossil fuel finance positions, but can’t ignore that over one in four of its shareholders think its current approach is completely inconsistent with its own commitments.

ANZ has poured more money into fossil fuels than any other Australian bank since the Paris Agreement was signed back in late 2015: over $20 billion, including over $12 billion to fossil fuel expansion projects and the companies developing them.

All of this has been enabled by ANZ’s weak fossil fuel finance policies, which seem tailor-made to allow the bank to keep pumping billions into companies whose plans are not to transition from, but actually grow their fossil fuel production.

After being hit with a legal action from a shareholder over climate risk management concerns, ANZ’s board upgraded climate to a ‘material risk’ to the business in November 2023.

The evidence doesn’t suggest this has had much impact on ANZ’s behaviour as its approach to fossil fuel clients’ transition plans remains the weakest of Australia’s big four banks. Scope 3 emissions targets still aren’t required, meaning ANZ can overlook its clients’ plans to massively increase their coal, oil and gas production. This makes a mockery of the purpose of transition plans.

Over the last year ANZ continued to fund plenty of climate wrecking clients like Santos, APA Group, JERA, GE Vernova, Baker Hughes, and San Miguel.

Shareholder resolution – ANZ on notice

27.2% of ANZ shareholder votes went in favour of a Market Forces resolution calling for the bank to stop financing fossil fuel companies without Paris-aligned transition plans.

If the massive increase in support for the 2024 Westpac resolution taught us anything it’s that shareholders expect consistent improvements and progress on fossil fuel finance – especially after they’ve been put on notice.

As Australia’s biggest financier of fossil fuel expansion, ANZ will be squarely in shareholders’ sights in 2025. To address shareholder concern, ANZ must:

  • put in place a transition plan assessment framework that credibly assesses a company’s alignment with the goals of the Paris Agreement,
  • categorically commit to stop financing fossil fuel companies that don’t have a 1.5°C-aligned transition plan from October 2025, and
  • apply this requirement to all of its fossil fuel customers, including pipeline companies, gas-fired power generators, and metallurgical coal miners.

Working with customers to reduce their emissions…by supporting their fossil fuel expansion

ANZ continues to insist that it is supporting its fossil fuel customers to reduce their emissions, even when its clients have clear and public plans to massively increase their emissions with their coal, oil and gas expansion plans.

The expansion of fossil fuels will delay the clean-energy transition and ensure that the world blows past the Paris Agreement’s goal of preserving a liveable future. Providing ‘general corporate purpose’ finance to companies with aggressive fossil fuel expansion plans is an active impediment to the clean-energy transition and a gross violation of ANZ’s climate commitments.

Market Forces Bank Analyst, Kyle Robertson, asked the ANZ board why it hasn’t implemented a policy to limit finance to fossil fuel companies to legitimate transition activities like clean energy projects.

In response, ANZ Chair Paul O’Sullivan said “we will continue to work with them provided they have clearly committed to a pathway to reduce carbon emissions intensity in line with the Paris Agreement.”

The reality is that in 2023 alone ANZ loaned or arranged over $1.7 billion for companies with fossil fuel expansion plans, more than any other Australian bank. The gap between ANZ’s rhetoric and its actual fossil fuel finance activity is stark. It’s abundantly clear the bank is still willing to finance companies even when their pathway is dangerously out of line with Paris.

Is ANZ ignoring the science on climate change?

The IPCC has concluded for years that existing and committed fossil fuel projects will produce enough emissions to comfortably blow past the 1.5°C warming limit of the Paris Agreement.

Many IPCC scientists have expressed their despair at where the world is heading, with hundreds indicating they believe the world will warm by at least a catastrophic 2.5°C above pre-industrial levels based on planned levels of fossil fuel production.

Frustration, hopelessness, and anger from the world’s climate science community is common as huge amounts of investment continue to flow into increasing the production of planet-heating fossil fuels against all scientific recommendations.

Ahead of its AGM, several of Australia’s leading climate and environmental scientists called on ANZ to listen to the latest climate science and stop financing the companies driving catastrophic climate change.

Climate scientist and Emeritus Professor, Nigel Tapper, also a lead author of the IPCC’s latest report, asked the ANZ Chair if the bank accepts the IPCC’s conclusions that fossil fuel expansion is incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5°C.

Astoundingly, ANZ Chair Paul O’Sullivan’s response was that “there are a variety of views” on this issue, even when the IPCC is the world’s leading authority on climate science.

Mr. O’Sullivan further stated ANZ did not want to be drawn into “an ideological debate”, to which Mr. Tapper articulated “with respect, it’s not an ideological debate, it’s actually the science.”

Mr. Tapper implored ANZ to seek advice from the world’s leading climate scientists when developing its fossil fuel finance policy, given that ANZ’s fossil fuel finance decisions continue to be at odds with the conclusions of the world’s climate scientists and its supposed commitments to the Paris Agreement.

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