Tuesday 22 February 2022

NatWest provided £17.5bn in climate-friendly funding in 2021

NatWest Group has revealed that it delivered £17.5 billion of climate-friendly funding to customers last year.

This contributes towards its target of spending £100 billion on sustainable projects by 2025.

It made a decision to divest in companies or activities that harm the planet and has seen that reflected in its recent report.

Lending to oil and gas companies dropped by 21% in 2021, making up just 0.7% of the bank’s overall lending.

From this year onwards, NatWest has stated it will only support upstream oil and gas companies that report the overall emissions of their operations to the bank by 2023.

It has committed to halve the climate impact of its financing by 2030 and become net zero by 2050.

CEO Alison Rose said: “Finance is a key enabler in the drive to net zero and we are acting to ensure that we are helping to end the most harmful activity while championing climate solutions and accelerating the speed of transition to the zero-carbon economy.

“The lending we’re making available is delivering real change - from helping families to purchase energy efficient homes to supporting businesses and projects that create jobs and speed up the UK’s transition to net zero.”