Dump coal or be dumped. That’s the message being delivered to Australia’s Big Four banks by the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, amid calls for the banks to rule out investment in new mega coal mines – and associated rail and port facilities – in Queensland.
The AYCC said on Friday it would launch the Dump Your Bank Campaign this coming Monday, calling on Australians to demand their bank rule out financial backing of projects that threatened Australia’s marine environment and exacerbated climate change, or else lose their business.
The call follows news this week that the new Queensland Labor government has essentially green-lighted the plans of two Indian companies to mine a huge untapped coal deposit in the Galilee Basin and ship it out of Australia via an expanded Abbot Point port.
The proposed developments have been highly criticised for the environmental threat they pose to the Great Barrier Reef, and for the sheer quantity of heavy-polluting coal they would introduce into a struggling market and a world battling catastrophic climate change.
For these reasons, a total of nine global banking groups – including US giants Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan – have formally declared they will not finance the proposed Galilee coal projects and export terminals.
Australian banks, meanwhile, have remained largely silent on the issue – until this week, that is, when ANZ commodities analyst Mark Parvan told the Financial Times that, “with thermal coal at $60 a tonne and the Galilee coal 500-odd kilometres from port, funding these projects doesn’t seem viable.
Parvan’s view aligns with those of many other commodities and economic analysts, including IEEFA’s Tim Buckley, who has argued here on various occasions that there is no market for Galilee coal – not even in energy poor India.
Still, Australia’s banks have not ruled out financing the Queensland coal projects, and the AYCC wants to know why.
“Nine international banks have ruled out investing in building the Abbot Point coal port on the Great Barrier Reef and now ANZ’s Head of Commodity Research is calling them unviable. It’s clearly time for the big four banks to rule out investing in building new coal ports on the Great Barrier Reef,” said AYCC National Campaigner, Daniel Spencer.
“Opening up the Galilee basin doesn’t make sense economically, for the Reef or our future. Young people are really concerned about the impact these projects will have on our future, so why won’t the big four banks put our minds at ease and rule out the projects once and for all.
This Monday we’ll launch the Dump Your Bank campaign to help Australians say to their bank, if you won’t rule out Reef and climate destruction, you’re dumped!”
Whether this campaign will have any impact on the investment decisions of Australian banks is another question. According to Sydney-based coal miner Whitehaven, the Big Four are still well and truly behind the fossil fuel industry, having just backed the company in a refinancing deal.
Whitehaven chief executive Paul Flynn told Fairfax Media on Wednesday that campaigners who had urged investors to dump holdings in fossil fuel companies could “make their own minds” as to whether the refinancing was a blow to their cause. To Flynn, it represents “a very strong endorsement of the company and our industry”.
“For those who think the coal industry is part of the past, they may need to rethink their views, because that is certainly not the view of those who have just funded the deal,” he said.
“To have all the major banks represented in our syndicate and for them to sign up again, on even better terms than what we had before, obviously their belief in our business and our industry is very strong.”
For its part, the AYCC is not giving up hope.
“The Galilee basin is one of the world’s largest coal reserves and opening it up doesn’t just threaten the Great Barrier Reef, it’s a threat to the future of young people because of climate change,” said Spencer.
“Thousands of young people have written messages to the CEO’s of the big four banks, we’ve met with hundreds of bank managers, but they haven’t listened. So now we’re putting our money where our mouth is.”
