Sensitive ANZ sets CO2 funding goals
ANZ expects to "fund and facilitate investment of A$10 billion" over the next five years "to support our customers to transition to a low carbon economy."Christine Tonkin, managing director of global loans, elaborated at an industry conference yesterday that this was up from facilitating around $6.5 billion in investment over the previous five years.Both values, she explained, allowed for equity and debt investment in projects in which the bank was a financier and did not represent ANZ's direct lending on relevant projects."I personally would like to see us exceed that by some distance," she said.Tonkin was speaking at the Investor Group on Climate Change summit in Melbourne, following the release this week of an updated outline of "sensitive sector policies [and] responsible business lending."This included a package of policy measures on sensitive industries, such as energy, mining, water, forestry and the production of military equipment.The energy policy includes one concrete goal, "a carbon emission threshold to ensure we only support new coal fired power plants that use advanced technologies and higher quality coal to significantly reduce emissions to at least 0.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour."The bank said the threshold applied to new loans and excluded "pre-existing activities in this sector, including commitments already made or business opportunities which are at an advanced stage of negotiation."