26 February 2019

The coal break-up

How financial institutionsarephasing-out support to European coal utilities

The publicly available no-coal policies by financial actors have grown in number over time: most of the leading European investors, insurers and banks now have policy guidelines either conditioning or restricting their support to the coal sector.

No-coal policies have also become increasingly sophisticated: while initially they only covered certain coal projects or coal companies, they now affect virtually all companies active in the coal value chain. The first coal policies were adopted by banksin 2010, and initially focused on reducing support to the building of new coal infrastructure. They later moved on to reduce corporate finance support for coal.

In this briefing, the Europe Beyond Coal Campaign has identified key power utilities in Europe that need an urgent transformation: ČEZ, Engie, Enel/Endesa, EUAS, Fortum/Uniper, PGE and RWE. Together, the companies account for almost half of the EU’s operating coal fleet, and some have plans to further expand their coal activities