Coal is the world's deadliest fossil fuel, damaging people's health, destroying local ecosystems, and acting as the number-one driver of climate change worldwide. All scenarios aiming to keep the world at a safe temperature – including the Paris Agreement – involve rapidly phasing out coal.
Despite its January 2020 policy on coal, BlackRock remains a huge coal investor with over $85 billion invested in the coal sector worldwide as of November 2020.
Many of the current projects are being pursued by diversified energy or mining companies, and are therefore missed by many financial institutions’ coal exclusion policies.
BlackRock remains in the embarrassing position of being one of the world’s biggest investors in coal. In 2019, BlackRock still held over $17B in 86 coal plant developers. When looking at the top five companies expanding coal power worldwide, BlackRock is one of the top five investors in four of them.
Many European asset managers have policies excluding coal from all their funds. BlackRock’s 2020 coal policy only affects less than 20% of the companies identified on Urgewald’s Global Coal Exit List. BlackRock recently scored barely above zero in the Coal Policy Tool scorecard produced by Reclaim Finance.
A truly sustainable BlackRock would remove all support for coal from both its active and passive funds, further accelerating the demise of this deadly and obsolete industry.
