METHODOLOGY

The Coal Policy Tool rates the coal sector policies of financial institutions on a consistent and transparent scoring grid built upon five key criteria

Criteria

Coal policies are rated according to 5 criteria:

  • The first criteria covers the exclusion of coal mines, coal plants, and coal infrastructure.
  • The second criteria addresses the exclusion of all financial services to companies planning new coal mines, coal plants or coal infrastructure projects.
  • The third criteria covers the exclusion of companies which are most exposed to the coal sector, based on their share of revenues or electricity production from coal.
  • The fourth criteria covers the exclusion of the largest coal producers and largest coal plant operators.
  • The fifth criteria addresses the quality of the coal phase-out strategy.

Our analysis focuses on thermal coal and not metallurgical coal.

Read more about the five criteria.

An easy and public scoring system:

For the first four criteria, the rating logic is simple: the more coal companies excluded by the policy, the higher the score. For the fifth criteria, the more elements of a good coal phase-out strategy the policy takes on board, the higher the score.

Many policies allow exceptions, use inappropriate metrics or weaken the impact of criteria by limiting their application to certain activities. In these cases, a malus of one or two points is applied for each criteria to sanction these limitations and loopholes.

Policies only applying to SRI/ESG funds are not considered in this analysis, except if they are the only ones proposed by the financial player.

The analysis grid is available below the Coal Policy Tool.

The tool

It presents a visual and quantitative analysis of the policies for each of the 5 criteria.

The scoring system is simple: It is based on a score from 0 to 10 and a traditional color code (red, orange, yellow, green), to quickly identify the quality of the policies with regard to the assessed criteria.

A paragraph summarizes the content of each policy per criteria, the source used (policy, press release, web page…), and a brief analysis by Reclaim Finance.

Filters allow you to limit the selection to either banks, insurers or investors so that you can better compare financial players to their peers.

Two special marks-up make it easy to identify in the tool:

Financial players with best practices and a robust coal phase-out strategy are identified by a star next to their name.

Financial players which are preparing a new coal policy, or an update of their current coal policy, are identified by this icon next to their name.

Two other indicators are sometimes used in place of the scoring from one to ten:

[NA] Criteria not applicable to this type of financial player.

Reclaim Finance could not give a definite score and have contacted the financial institution for clarification.

Financial institutions

The Coal Policy Tool covers all the biggest banks, (re)insurers, asset owners and asset managers globally, as well as those identified to have a coal policy, in 36 countries, from Australia to the United States. As of April 2023, are included in the tool:

  • The top 100 banks according to “The world’s 100 largest banks‘‘ ranking (Standard & Poor’s, 2022). The top 60 banks are also assessed in the Banking on Climate Chaos 2023 report;
  • The top 29 insurers covered in the 2022 Scorecard on Insurance, Fossil Fuels & Climate Change (their insurance and investment activities are both covered separately) and 20 Lloyd’s of London managing agents covered in our 2023 report on Lloyd’s of London;
  • The top 70* asset owners according to “The Asset Owner 100” ranking (Thinking Ahead Institute, Willis Tower Watson, 2022), with seven OCIOs not included;
  • The top 100 asset managers according to “The world’s largest asset managers” ranking (Thinking Ahead Institute, Willis Tower Watson, 2022);
  • Over 160 financial institutions which joined the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ), most of them being also included in the above-mentioned rankings. Therefore, the Coal Policy Tool assesses all the major financial institutions that have signed the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAO), the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAM) and the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA);
  • 36 signatories of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, most of them being also included in the above-mentioned rankings;
  • The largest French financial institutions;
  • Some other financial institutions added at the request of our partners.

    *The previous methodology was assessing the top 100 asset owners, the new scope is lower.

    Some financial institutions fall into more than one of the above categories.

    Please note that due to a methodological review in April 2023, the number of financial institutions assessed has been reduced. This may explain some discrepancies with previous statistics, particularly in terms of the number of policies assessed. The overall number of financial institutions has been reduced so that the tracking of new policies can be most up to date.

    This allows us to find:

    1. 236 financial institutions with a coal policy. 236 is the number of institutions left once duplicates have been removed as insurers are graded both for their insurance as well as their investment policies.
    2. 164 top financial institutions have no coal policies. Excluding duplicates, these 164 are the financial institutions in the top global rankings mentioned above for banks (Standard & Poor’s), insurers in the 2022 Scorecard on Insurance (Insure Our Future), asset owners and asset managers (Willis Tower Watson rankings) that do not have a coal policy.

    Policies for which we were only able to find press articles, but not a direct public source were not considered. Only coal policies publicly available directly on financial players websites are taken into account.

    All financial players mentioned in the Coal Policy Tool were contacted and had an opportunity to comment on their ratings before publication, except a dozen for whom Reclaim Finance were unable to find relevant contacts. These messages led to exchanges with the majority of financial institutions covered in the tool.

    The Coal Policy Tool will be continuously updated whenever new policies are adopted or existing policies are upgraded.

    There are more than 640 scores given in the tool, out of over 2400 criteria that could be assessed, so despite our best efforts, an error is possible but our goal is for the tool to be up to date as much as possible.

    Reclaim Finance welcomes feedback from financial institutions, especially if are missing an existing coal policy.

    Go to the Coal Policy Tool