Congratulations to everyone who has been working on the anti-MTR Bank campaign! Here’s just released from BoA Headquarters:
As Bank of America expands our support and commitment to energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other low-carbon energy sources through our lending, investments, products and services, and operations, we recognize that at the present time, fossil fuels, and coal in particular, will continue to supply a significant amount of the energy needed to power our society.
There are environmental and other impacts associated with any energy source. For coal, these impacts result from extraction, processing and combustion. Bank of America continues to engage key stakeholders including coal producers, utility companies, leading universities, and the environmental community on energy, coal, the environment, and the necessary technologies to promote low-carbon energy. From these discussions, we have developed a policy that will ensure that Bank of America plays a significant role as a leading financial services company in promoting the responsible use of coal. Our policy is focused on the following elements:
Technology
Advanced technologies such as carbon capture and storage that capture carbon from fossil fuel plants and then sequester that carbon in geologic reservoirs will be necessary for addressing global climate change while enabling economies to flourish. Through our partnerships we will promote the necessary conditions for implementing carbon capture and storage on a global scale. We will employ our resources as a financial institution to promote the development and deployment of these advanced technologies to reduce the carbon emissions produced by the burning of fossil fuels.
Financial Services Policy
We will support, adopt, and adhere to leading practices for managing the environmental impacts associated with coal. Bank of America has taken a leadership position by committing to the Carbon Principles and reducing emissions associated with our utility portfolio as best practices for managing risks associated with coal.
Extraction
Bank of America is particularly concerned about surface mining conducted through mountain top removal in locations such as central Appalachia. We therefore will phase out financing of companies whose predominant method of extracting coal is through mountain top removal. While we acknowledge that surface mining is economically efficient and creates jobs, it can be conducted in a way that minimizes environmental impacts in certain geographies.
