PH BANKS STILL FUNDING COAL POWER PROJECTS

An umbrella group of Philippine environment advocacy groups warned that the use of fossil fuels for power generation was growing, with local banks not only continuing to fund coal projects but also natural-gas fired facilities.

The Withdraw from Coal (WFC) coalition lamented that despite announcing intentions to stay clear from coal-related investments, banks have yet to do so.

“Banks cannot trick us into believing that they are truly divesting from coal unless they close this loophole of funneling funds through bonds,” said WFC co-convenor Gerry Arances, who is also executive director of the Quezon Citybased Center for Energy, Ecology and Development.

“We need to fix this disconnect between domestic banks’ no-coal stance with the reality of their financing activities,” Arances said in a media briefing.

The WFC came out with its latest annual Coal Divestment Scorecard, now on its third year, which is an assessment of the financing activities of domestic banks. This is to gauge their current divestment efforts in the coal industry, and evaluate their climate action policies.

The group’s 2022 scorecard shows that, even if at least five banks have publicly vowed to stay away from coal and even if there were no coal-related loans, banks were still, in effect, enabling funds to flow into such projects by underwriting or selling bonds issued by coal developers.

LNG financing

Also, the WFC said there was an upsurge of domestic banks’ investment in natural gas, which the government has identified as a replacement for coal as the country’s main fuel for electricity generation.

The coalition said there was a pipeline of Philippine projects comprising 27 power plants and nine liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing and storage terminals.

Bishop Colin Bagaforo, nadirector of Caritas Philippines, said dioceses and religious institutions have set a deadline to withdraw all their resources that are with those banks that still enable coal financing not later than 2025.

The 2022 scorecard shows that among 16 banks evaluated, the top three financiers of coal and natural gas projects were Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), Philippine National Bank and BDO.

For its part, BPI has committed to reduce its coal power generation portfolio to half by 2026 and to zero by 2032.

On the other hand, the “cleanest” banks were East West Banking Corp. and Philippine Bank of Communications, the group said.