RBS Campaign Summary
Edinburgh P&P protest against ‘The Oil Bank of Scotland’ as the bank tries to sign up freshers
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is a hugely significant private funder of oil and gas extraction and exploration. Between 2001 and 2006, RBS provided over $10 billion in loans to oil and gas projects. The embedded carbon emissions resulting from these projects in 2006 were greater than the carbon emissions for the whole of Scotland.
RBS has positioned itself as ‘the oil and gas bank’. With dedicated oil and gas offices, RBS has significant experience and expertise in the sector, and provides crucial services to oil and gas companies. Working as a hands-on partner to the industry, RBS structured the loan agreements and acted as financial adviser on over $30 billion of projects between 2001 and 2006. Other banks describe RBS as the most competitive in the sector, prepared to undercut other banks and offer cheaper loans and finance the projects no other British bank will.
The intimate relationship that RBS has with the fossil fuel industry extends to new areas of expansion. As traditional oil extraction begins to peak, unconventional fossil fuels, such as oil sands and coal bed methane, are becoming a reality. Previously inaccessible, this ‘dirty’ oil requires far more energy to convert into usable forms than traditional crude oil, resulting in much higher carbon emissions. RBS has called the development of oil sands an “energy-financing growth area”, and identified the need for “drilling dollars” for coal bed methane development.
What we want
Demands
People & Planet are calling on RBS to:
calculate and publish the embedded emissions resulting from loans to oil and gas projects
cap embedded emissions and set annual targets for reductions
commit to a complete transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy lending
establish ‘no-go’ areas for lending: immediately halt loans to unconventional fossil fuels (eg coal and tar sands) and which affect sensitive ecosystems such as rainforests.
Like DFID, RBS has a choice. It could continue to push open the carbon frontier, locking in emissions for years to come. Alternatively, RBS could choose to take its climate impact seriously and commit to switching financing to renewable energy projects.
According to its corporate responsibility report, RBS committed $2.6 billion to renewable energy projects in 2006. This is a welcome start, but it doesn’t tell the whole story of RBS’s energy funding.
Exact figures for financing are hard to come by as RBS does not publish these transparently. However, on the basis of what we know about specific loans, we can be fairly confident in estimating that RBS was responsible for well over $10 billion to fossil fuel projects and companies in 2006 alone - much more than the finance for renewable energy.
In other words, RBS is currently claiming climate credit for its loans to renewable energy projects, while refusing to admit climate responsibility for the much larger part of its business which props up the oil and gas industry. This must change.
Campaign Strategy
People & Planet is not calling for a boycott of RBS-NatWest.
Students are critical customers for RBS-NatWest. A student boycott could have a significant impact on RBS-NatWest’s customer base. However, we are not yet calling for a boycott because:
We want to engage with RBS-NatWest reasonably and rationally, giving them the chance to improve their policy.
We don’t want to let other banks off the hook. If another bank emerges as a bigger player in oil and gas than RBS-NatWest, we can shift target, and focus the campaign on them as well as or instead of RBS-NatWest.
We believe that RBS-NatWest should be able to develop a policy committing them to a transition to renewable energy within the next two years. If they do not make significant progress to address their climate impacts, we will consider calling a boycott in two years’ time.
Jargon Buster
Embedded Emissions
Embedded emissions are the emissions that will result from oil or gas produced or brought to the market from financed operations. RBS’s embedded emissions are calculated on the basis of the proportion of the financing they have provided for specific projects.
Oil Sands
Oil Sands or Tar Sands are a specific type of oil which are very difficult to extract. They are a mixture of sand or clay, water and extremely heavy crude. Oil sands have lost the lighter elements of crude oil making it a much more viscous form of oil. This requires it to be processed at much greater temperature to turn into a usable form of oil.
Coalbed Methane
Coalbed methane is a form of natural gas which is stored in coal by absoption into the pores also called the matrix. The gas must be extracted by drilling pipes into the coalbed and separating the gas from the water. This is a much more difficult process than natural gas extraction and generally the yield is lower, thereby making it significantly less efficient.
Links
More info can be found on the oyal bank of scotland website.
Or you can downloadPLATFORM’s report on The Royal Bank of Scotland.