Climate Policies Pushed by Global Elites Are About To Raise Our Clothing Costs
But what if, it turns out, your money is actually supporting some of the world’s biggest polluters expand their coal operations, particularly in the Global South?
You’ve got money to invest. You want to grow it but without making the climate crisis worse. Your financial advisor shows you the latest “green” funds promoting “environmental and social objectives” under EU rules.
It sounds reassuring. You wire them your savings.
But what if, it turns out, your money is actually supporting some of the world’s biggest polluters expand their coal operations, particularly in the Global South?
That is what our investigation discovered after looking under the hood of “green” funds offered by leading asset managers under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).
They hold shares worth at least $65 million in top coal miners and giant coal power producers, in China and India in particular.
These companies are planning vast expansions of their coal activities, despite the 2021 Glasgow agreement to “phase-down unabated coal power” and the warnings from the International Energy Agency (IEA) to halt new coal projects if we want to keep the 1.5C goal within reach.
The issue is that those sustainable finance regulations are actually “very weak”, as Lara Cuvelier, a campaigner at Reclaim Finance, told us.
The European Commission knows that too. It admitted that the definitions are not being used as intended leading to “risks of greenwashing” when it kicked off a review of the rules last year. That process will fall into the hands of the incoming executive.
Meanwhile, in coal-reliant South Africa, a new government has already taken shape this week. The hope is that the first-ever coalition between the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA) will push the accelerator on the stuttering energy transition.
The initial signs are promising, analysts told Climate Home. The pro-coal minister Gwede Mantashe lost his stranglehold over energy policy, which he used to slow down renewable energy investments.
A lot is riding on the $9.3 billion Just energy transition partnership (JETP) which has made little progress on the ground after being announced with much fanfare in 2021.
A senior DA official told us that the programme “will need to be accelerated” through a more fruitful dialogue with its Western backers. The real test is whether the two parties that never worked together before can form a united front.