Today PNC Financial Services Group joined the growing ranks of financial institutions that have officially sanctioned the coal mining practice known as mountaintop removal (MTR.) Citing concerns about the environmental and health impacts of MTR, as well as financial risks, PNC pledged to no longer extend credit to individual MTR mining projects or to firms with 25 percent or more of their production coming from MTR.

Rainforest Action Network (RAN), which has for years worked to push the financial sector to disavow MTR, hailed the new PNC policy as a positive indication that MTR is increasingly seen as being unbankable. "PNC took a big step in the right direction today by acknowledging the serious health and environmental impacts of mountaintop removal, and by committing to reduce its exposure to this toxic practice. We'll be scrutinizing PNC's future financing decisions to see how this new policy is implemented," said RAN Climate and Energy Program Director Amanda Starbuck. "Overall, we see today's news as indicative of a broader trend within the financial sector. Banks no longer want to be associated with a dangerous, abhorrent practice like mountaintop removal; there is an emerging financial industry consensus that these practices are unacceptable. Concretely, this means mountaintop removal companies will have a harder time securing financing to operate and expand in the future."

With this new commitment, PNC joins the growing ranks of banks that have adopted policies to cut financing for top MTR producers. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, RBS, BNP Paribas, and UBS have all cut ties with firms that specialize in mountaintop removal.

PNC's new MTR policy, released today as part of the PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. 2015 Corporate Responsibility Report (available online here), reads as follows:

"Driven by environmental and health concerns, as well as our risk appetite, we introduced a mountaintop removal (MTR) financing policy in late 2010 and subsequently enhanced that policy in 2014. As a result, our MTR financing exposure has declined significantly and will continue to do so moving forward. Overall, PNC's exposure to firms participating in MTR represents less than one-quarter of 1 percent of PNC's total financing commitments. Under the policy, PNC will not extend credit to individual MTR mining projects or to coal producers with 25 percent or more of their production coming from MTR mining."

In an introduction to the 2015 CSR report, PNC CEO William Demchak also wrote, "Our businesses implemented a number of important changes in 2014 to make environmental considerations a more prominent factor in PNC's lending while still balancing those considerations with the economic needs of the communities we serve. As part of these efforts, we enhanced PNC's mountaintop removal (MTR) financing policy. Due to environmental and health concerns, as well as our risk appetite, our MTR financing exposure has declined significantly over time, with current exposure to firms participating in MTR representing less than one-quarter of one percent of PNC's total financing commitments, and it will continue to decline.