At the nationwide protest day of Fridays for Future, for which several thousand participants are expected in Frankfurt this Friday, the activists are looking at the banks.

The climate movement criticizes financial companies for not sufficiently committed to sustainability and for continuing to finance climate offenders.

The activists accuse Commerzbank, for example, of supporting fossil energy companies with more than eleven billion dollars since the Paris climate agreement.

Deutsche Bank invested 74 billion dollars in climate-damaging ways between 2016 and 2020, they have calculated.

Daniel Schleidt

Deputy coordinator of the business editorial department in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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As lenders, banks play a central role in transforming the economy towards more sustainability.

Ultimately, financial resources provided by financial institutions, but also the terms and conditions of the loans, determine the development of companies and what the money is used for.

This is why there is growing pressure on financial corporations to make lending more transparent and adapt it to sustainable criteria - especially since more and more customers are asking for green financial investments because they do not want to finance climate sinners with their savings.

From the point of view of environmentalists, however, the banks are not strict enough in this regard. They regard many activities as alibi measures and above all criticize German companies for lagging behind their competitors in a global comparison.

Discussion about sustainable financial products

The banks are defending themselves against the accusation that they are not acting in a climate-friendly manner. When it comes to sustainability, they see themselves as part of the solution rather than the problem by increasingly promoting green investments and making commitments to sustainability goals.

Commerzbank, for example, refers to its coal directive issued in 2016, in which certain exclusion criteria for investments are formulated, according to which the bank no longer finances coal-fired power plants and coal mines. According to the bank, this policy is currently being revised. According to a statement by CEO Manfred Knof, who took office at the beginning of the year, sustainability is a core element of the strategy up to the year 2024. According to this, the volume of sustainable financial products for both corporate and private customers is to be "rapidly" expanded. "In the past six months alone we have increased this volume from 100 billion to a good 140 billion euros," said a spokesman for the FAZ. By 2025 at the latest, it should be 300 billion.

But that's not enough for environmentalists. The Urgewald organization, for example, criticizes the bank's coal directive as being far too weak. In this way, coal-fired power plants would no longer be financed, but companies that built such plants would. In addition, many guidelines would not have applied to existing customers until 2021, "they could stay as dirty as they wanted," it says there. Commerzbank refers to “an intensive dialogue with NGOs” in order to further develop its own sustainability strategy. Within the bank, the CO2 emissions were reduced by 70 percent compared to 2007, here the house wants to be at zero net by 2040 at the latest, which also includes, for example, emissions from suppliers.