The Crédit Agricole bank has gone further than its French counterparts by announcing that it will stop financing new oil extraction projects, a commitment that environmental organizations have been calling for for years.
The mutual banking group also specified some of its climate objectives, in particular its ambition to reduce its exposure to oil extraction by 25% by 2025 compared to 2020.
“Crédit Agricole becomes the first major French bank to stop direct support for new oil fields and announces that it will be more selective and restrictive in its support for gas-fired power plants,” welcomed the NGO Reclaim Finance, which regrets, however, that the bank “spares gas”.
So far, the only French banks that have announced policies to largely exclude expansion in the oil and gas sectors are banks that have historically had little connection with these industries, a fact that their competitors have often pointed to as justification for their lesser ambitions.
By 2030, Crédit Agricole also wants to reduce the CO2 emissions of its customers whose activities are linked to oil and gas by 30% compared to 2020.
For its electricity-producing customers, the bank is aiming for a 58% reduction in CO2 emissions per kilowatt-hour produced.
The bank has also specified its objectives for automobiles (CO2 emissions per kilometer driven by its customers and per car produced halved), commercial real estate (-40% of CO2 emitted per square meter per year) and for cement (-20% of CO2 emitted per ton of cement produced).
French banks have been applauded in recent years for their withdrawal from coal, which is expected to be complete in 2030 for OECD countries and in 2040 for others.
But these banks have been singled out by NGOs for their support of oil and gas.
