In less than three weeks, COP26 will get under way in Glasgow. It is the largest climate summit since COP21, which led to the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Many financial institutions responded to the 2015 summit by announcing restrictions on their support for the coal sector. A welcome first step, but the IEA just reaffirmed in its World Energy Outlook that getting out of coal is not enough.
Stopping oil and gas expansion is also a sine qua non condition for achieving carbon neutrality. With all indicators, on climate and biodiversity alike, flashing red, banks, insurers, and investors must urgently come forward around these new key dates, notably the Climate Finance Day in France, to meet this scientific imperative.
That’s what La Banque Postale has just done - all eyes now turn to the leaders of the financial coalitions for carbon neutrality, like AXA, which chairs the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance. As the membership of financial coalitions for carbon neutrality grows larger and larger, the risk of these spaces becoming temples of greenwashing is high.
AXA currently has no policy whatsoever to stop the development of new oil and gas fields, not even in the riskiest sectors. But CEO Thomas Buberl has indicated that the company will announce a new energy policy in 2021 and will be present at the Climate Finance Day forum. The insurance giant must seize this opportunity to establish the way forward as it did with its increasingly strong coal policies in 2015, 2017, and 2019. After the "no new coal" moment of 2017, it's time for a "no new oil and gas" moment.
