Following the IPCC’s fresh report highlighting the need to urgently address the climate crisis, you’d expect CommBank to aim higher and go faster, right? Wrong.

Earlier this week, the bank released an updated policy which weakens and undermines its own existing commitments to the Paris Agreement and net zero emissions by 2050. As a result, a Market Forces-supported resolution has been lodged with the company by over 100 shareholders.[1][2]

Learn more, take action: Tell CommBank to correct its climate policy and match its commitments with action

The policy sees CommBank water down an existing barrier to funding expansionary fossil fuel projects, while giving climate-wrecking companies another four years before taking climate action.

This is completely inconsistent with CommBank’s support for net zero by 2050, as the recent IEA net zero report makes clear there is no room to expand the scale of the fossil fuel industry.

The bank will also adopt ‘glidepaths’ for the coal, oil and gas sectors, expected to guide the bank’s funding for these sectors moving forward. However, the bank intends to base these pathways on the IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS), a scenario that allows for expansion of the fossil fuel industry and would see net zero achieved by 2070.[3]

Tell CommBank: This is not how not to respond to the IPCC’s climate report

The bank is also giving climate-destructive companies at least another 4 years to continue with business as usual, saying it “expects” existing fossil fuel clients such as Santos and Origin Energy to publish transition plans by 2025, but without stating the consequences of failing to do so.

Meanwhile, Santos and Origin continue pursuing massive climate-wrecking fossil fuel developments such as the Barossa Gas Project, Narrabri Gas Project and fracking of the Beetaloo Basin.

We’ll continue to empower customers, shareholders and the community to scrutinise CommBank and all of the major banks’ lending to coal, oil and gas. Let’s cut the flow of funding to the industries that threaten our chance of a safe climate. Now, more than ever, we must leave dirty fossil fuels behind.

Onwards,

Jack, on behalf of Market Forces