Campaigners are calling on Barclays to close what they see as a loophole’ in its energy policy that allows the financing of fracking companies
But ShareAction, which campaigns for responsible investment, pointed out that pureplay companies working on short-term extraction projects are exempted from this commitment. Its financing of pureplay firms decreased by 42% from an average of 1.9 billion dollars between 2016-2020 to 1.1 billion dollars between 2021-2022 – the latest year for which figures are available.
Barclays argues that the financing of fracking does not lock in long-term emissions since most projects have a short-term lifecycle and that more widely, investment is needed to support existing energy assets while clean energy is scaled. But they also said the changes did not go far enough to a make significant impact on the bank’s fossil fuel financing.
“We’re calling on Barclays’ shareholders to ask the bank to close these loopholes and rule out financing for all pureplay oil and gas companies, including fracking clients, wherever they are in the world.”