Mika Minio-Paluello of PLATFORM said “Following our March report, RBS have dropped the title "The Oil & Gas Bank" and moved from climate denial to recognition that climate change is a major threat. We see this as a campaign success, but remain concerned that the bank continues to obscure its full impacts on the climate.”

Duncan McLaren of Friends of the Earth Scotland said "We wish this represented a fundamental shift in RBS' approach to climate change. However, the reality is that RBS's lending practices and policies will continue to drive climate chaos."

PRACTICE
RBS continues to obscure the true reality of its financing of fossil fuels. The CSR report makes much of the $2.6 billion RBS provided to renewables project finance in 2006, while playing down the $2.9 billion provided to oil & gas project finance.

However, this focus solely on project finance creates a false impression that the bank’s support for renewable energy is comparable to its support for fossil fuels. General corporate finance far outweighs project finance and includes extensive support for oil & gas and very little for renewables. In one loan to ConocoPhillips alone, RBS acted as administrative agent on $22.5 billion of credit facilities. Only two days before publication of the CSR report, RBS spent $1.35 billion acquiring majority shares in Sempra Commodities - a company specialising in marketing crude oil and coal.

Mika Minio-Paluello of PLATFORM said “Due to RBS’ refusal to act transparently, it’s near impossible to estimate its corporate finance loans to renewables. However, we’re pretty confident that in 2006, the bank provided well over $10 billion to fossil fuels – more than five times that provided to renewable energy.“

The 2006 CSR report also fails to mention the community, environmental and social concerns raised by the highly controversial projects it was intimately involved in during the year, including gas in the Niger Delta and highly polluting oil sands in Canada. The first has led to concerns over conflict, environmental destruction and community relocation. Extraction of oil sands in Alberta faces major opposition over alleged contribution to high cancer rates, destruction of the boreal forest and excessive carbon emissions.

Johan Frijns of BankTrack said “ If RBS is as serious about climate change as it claims, it would increase transparency over all financing of energy, not only project finance, and draft a public transition policy for moving from fossil fuels to renewables.”

POLICIES
In interviews with the FT and The Herald , Tom McKillop claims climate credit for financing renewables, while refusing to accept that RBS derives climate responsibility for financing fossil fuels. RBS continues to lag behind its competitors in recognizing the impacts of its loans: