Welcome to the Urgewald media center

• Bank almost doubled its investments in fossil fuels since Paris Agreement
• HSBC is Europe’s second largest investor in fossil fuels
• Shareholders are asking HSBC to publish the CO2 footprint of its portfolios

• Fossil activities abroad contradict the company’s and Finland‘s climate targets
• Human Rights issues in Fortum’s coal supply chain
• Growing responsibility for heavily fossil-loaded utility Uniper

• Bank accused of bad governance in Guyana’s oil & gas development assistance
• Funding for offshore drilling against Paris Agreement
• Urgewald urges Executive Directors to launch independent investigation

While Finland is striving to be the first European country to become carbon-neutral, the Finnish state-owned energy company Fortum is harming this course with its fossil activities abroad. Due to the fact that several other countries, such as Sweden, Norway and Germany, are either invested or involved in Fortum's activities, this is a topic of European significance. One day before Fortum’s annual general meeting, the environmental NGO Urgewald will be holding a digital press conference to share findings on the energy company’s involvement in fossil fuel extraction.

While today’s Annual General Meeting of the Finnish energy utility Fortum was cancelled due to the impacts of Corona Virus, a new letter from investors urges the company to use its influence on the German utility Uniper for a quick coal-phase out. The letter is signed by Amundi, Aviva Investors, AXA Investment Managers, Folksam, La Banque Postale Asset Management, Legal & General Investment Management, OFI Asset Management and Ostrum Asset Management. (...)

Sebastian Rötters, Energy Campaigner at Urgewald, commenting on the annual report released by German utility company RWE today:

“This is tasteless at best: RWE boss Schmitz publicly celebrates an ‘extraor-dinary year’ for RWE and announces increasing dividends. At the same time, he complains about too little government compensation for shutting down coal power plants. (...)”