METHODOLOGY

Navigating the “policy jungle” is not easy.
Reclaim Finance has therefore developed an online tool, the Coal Policy Tool,
that provides a comprehensive analysis of coal policies issued by French financial institutions.

Criteria

Coal policies are rated according to 5 criteria:

  • The first criteria covers the exclusion of coal mines, coal plants, and coal infrastructure.
  • The second criteria addresses the exclusion of all financial services to companies planning new coal mines, coal plants or coal infrastructure projects.
  • The third criteria covers the exclusion of companies, which are most exposed to the coal sector, based on their share of revenues or electricity production from coal.
  • The fourth criteria covers the exclusion of the largest coal producers and largest coal plant operators.
  • The fifth criteria addresses the quality of the coal phase-out strategy.

The analysis grid is avaiable below the Coal Policy Tool.

An easy and public scoring system:

For the first four criteria, the rating logic is simple: the more coal companies excluded by the policy, the higher the score. For the fifth criteria, the more elements of a good coal phase-out strategy the policy takes on board, the higher the score.

Many policies allow exceptions, use inappropriate metrics or weaken the impact of criteria by limiting their application to certain activities. In these cases, a malus of one or two points is applied for each criteria to sanction these limitations and loopholes.

Policies only applying to SRI/ESG funds are not considered in this analysis, except if they are the only ones proposed by the financial player.

The tool

It presents a visual and quantitative analysis of the policies for each of the 5 criteria.

The scoring system is simple: It is based on a score from 0 to 10 and a traditional color code (red, orange, yellow, green), to quickly identify the quality of the policies with regard to the assessed criteria.

A paragraph summarizes the content of each policy per criteria, the source used (policy, press release, web page…), and a brief analysis by Reclaim Finance.

Filters allow you to limit the selection to either banks, insurers or investors so that you can better compare financial players to their peers.

Two special marks-up make it easy to identify in the tool:

Financial players with best practices and a full and effective coal phase-out strategy are identified by a star next to their name.

Financial players which are preparing a new coal policy, or an update of their current coal policy, are identified by this icon next to their name.

[NA] Criteria not applicable to this type of financial player.

Financial institutions

The analysis tool includes:

  • All French financial institutions that have adopted a coal policy, to the best of our knowledge;
  • All French financial institutions which appear in Willis Towers Watson‘s table of the 500 largest global asset managers, even if they do not have a coal policy.

All financial players mentioned in the tool were contacted and had an opportunity to comment on their ratings before publication.

The coal policy tool will be continuously updated whenever new policies are adopted or existing policies are upgraded. We welcome feedback from financial institutions, especially if any existing coal policies have escaped us!