Citizens Financial Group
Your bank is failing on climate responsibility.
Citizens Bank is headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. The bank offers products and services to individuals, small businesses, and middle-market companies.
The bank does have clients in the oil and gas sector, although the extent of its lending to the sector is unclear. In 2023, Citizens announced a $50 billion Sustainable Finance Target, including $5 billion in green financing, by 2030. As part of this announcement, the bank stated that "they were committed to engage corporate clients in high-emitting sectors on climate-related topics, beginning with a target to engage 100% of our Oil & Gas clients by the end of 2024".
We would like to see the bank put in place an explicit and publicly available policy to confirm that it will not lend to any new fossil fuel projects and that it will gradually phase out its lending to existing oil and gas clients.
While you’ve been saving money for a home or a weekend get-away, your bank has likely been using your savings to lend to some very questionable fossil fuel friends.
Banks like this one have demonstrated that they're not interested in fighting in the climate crisis. While banks don't publish all of their lending information, we can see that this bank has positioned itself well to fund fossil fuels. We can also see its lack of interest in doing climate-positive things like measuring and disclosing its total emissions or stating that it doesn't fund fossil fuels. We've therefore given it our lowest rating.
Your bank may be ignoring the Paris Agreement.
The Paris Agreement set the goal to stay under 1.5°C of warming for very good reasons. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an increase of just a couple of degrees more could lead to "substantial species extinction, large risks to global and regional food security", and an inability to work outside — or even live — in some areas of the world. Our world will become unrecognizable as ocean dead zones, floods, and extreme weather fuel social and economic disruption.
Start to Bank Green Today
Banks live and die on their reputations. Mass movements of money to fossil-free competitors puts those reputations at grave risk. By moving your money to a sustainable financial institution, you will:
Send a message to your bank that it must defund fossil fuels
Join a fast-growing movement of consumers standing up for their future
Take a critical climate action with profound effects