Banks are under serious pressure to come clean about their ties to fossil fuel companies. Much of this criticism comes from environmentally focused non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as ShareAction in the UK and Sierra Club in the US.
Both have alleged that banks are reluctant to disclose comprehensive emissions reports on the capital markets side of their businesses. These are known as ‘facilitated emissions’, as opposed to ‘financed emissions’. The latter are easier to understand and measure, for example a bank that lends money directly to an oil company to build a pipeline. But harder to grasp are facilitated emissions, where a transaction — such as the initial public offering (IPO) of an oil major — is underwritten indirectly through the capital markets.
