2020 marks the fifth anniversary of the signing of the UN Paris Climate Agreement, and since then the world’s largest banks have financed fossil fuel companies to the tune of EUR 1,200 billion (Report, in Italian & English executive summary). Italy’s finance and insurance industry is a prime offender, responsible for funding four times more emissions than all of the country’s coal-fired power plants combined, and banks such as UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo have lent billions of Euros to energy companies which continue to open new coal-fired power stations and expand mines, like Finland’s Fortum and Germany’s RWE. Investment funds such as Anima and Azimut, along with insurance company Generali, also support some of the most polluting companies in Europe, such as Polish PGE and Czech CEZ.
To avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change, Italian financiers (and all financiers globally) urgently need to align their businesses with the UN Paris Climate Agreement, limiting the global average temperature increase to 1.5 DegC, as established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
