Standard Chartered Plc plans to fa- cilitate $35bn of funding for clean technology by 2025, joining rival banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc that are stepping up their climate-change promises. The London-based bank also vowed to only support those clients who are moving to generate less than 10% of their earnings from thermal coal by 2030, according to a statement on Tuesday. The new target ex- tends the previous 2016 goal that foresaw $4bn of green funding by 2020. “There has not been suffi cient invest- ment into this sector across emerging Asia, Africa and the Middle East,” the bank said. Chief executive offi cer Bill Winters said Standard Chartered is the fi rst bank ac- tive in emerging markets to “confi rm that we will be out of thermal coal by 2030.” Emerging markets are the focus of Stand- ard Chartered’s business, and generally rely more heavily on coal to generate elec- tricity than developed countries do. The bank also said it will withdraw from three coal-fi red power projects that it agreed to fi nance before revising its poli- cies last year. On Monday, Goldman Sachs announced a revision to its own policies, pledging to avoid directly fi nancing new thermal coal mines and upstream Arctic oil exploration. Standard Chartered also released a re- port detailing its progress aligning its lending portfolio with the goals of the Par- is Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to signifi cantly below 2 degrees. Standard Chartered’s plan to withdraw support from clients that aren’t transi- tioning away from coal will be implement- ed in phases, starting in January 2021. In 2018, the bank said it would prohibit direct fi nancing for new coal-fi red power plants.
