Press release
Paris, December 21, 2002 – The BPCE group today announced two new interim carbon emission reduction targets for 2030 in the electricity, oil and gas production sectors as part of its Net Zero Banking Alliance commitments (1). Reclaim Finance criticised the commitments as cautious and vague and attacked the lack of immediate commitments to halt the expansion of the oil and gas sector.
The BPCE group is only expected to specify the details of the targets announced today in 2023 and will not adopt targets for other sectors until 2024. In contrast Crédit Agricole has just published targets on the automotive, commercial real estate and cement sectors and promises to announce others as early as 2023 (2).
“This is a missed opportunity for the BPCE group, which is falling behind its competitors in the inevitable end of oil and gas expansion. The BPCE group needs to quickly clarify the nature of its commitments and to shift its support for new oil and gas projects to the development of renewable energies and energy efficiency,” says Lucie Pinson, Director of Reclaim Finance.
The BPCE group has set a target of 30% reduction in carbon emissions from financed oil and gas end-use (scope 3) by 2030. Without more detail, it is impossible to judge the quality of this target, but its adoption clearly does not guarantee an end to the BPCE Group’s support for the development of new fossil fuel projects, as needed to align itself with a 1.5°C trajectory, as recommended by scientists, the UN and the International Energy Agency (IEA),.
Last April, BPCE/Natixis contributed US$ 512 million to finance an US$ 8 billion loan to TotalEnergies, the European company which has the most new oil and gas fields planned. A month later, the bank provided US$ 609 million in financing for the new Plaquemines liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project in Louisiana and US$ 219 million for the third phase of the Corpus Cristi LNG expansion in Texas (3). These projects will contribute to greenhouse gas emissions for many years to come, even though they no longer appear on the bank’s balance sheet, allowing it to achieve its decarbonization targets.
BPCE claims its target for electricity production is in line with the IEA’s Net-Zero-2050 scenario,, aiming to go from 156 to 138 gCO2e/kWh in 10 years. Not only is this only a 12% decrease in its portfolio intensity, but BPCE appears to claim that the NZE target is based on a CO2e metric. The comparison of BPCE and IEA targets for the power sector in 2030 is also misleading, as Natixis’ current funded emissions intensity for this sector is almost three times lower than the global emissions intensity given by the IEA.