Climate Summit Bonn: Launch of the “Global Coal Exit List”
On November 9th during COP23 in Bonn, the environment NGO Urgewald will publish a comprehensive database on the global coal industry.
The “Global Coal Exit List” (GCEL) is the first database that identifies all major coal companies operating throughout the value chain from coal mining and coal trading to coal power. The GCEL is a tool for investors, banks and insurance companies to estimate the coal content of their portfolios and initiate effective divestment steps.
- “The Global Coal Exit List is amongst the most thorough coal databases we have seen so far. (…) It is a great tool for investors who want to move their portfolios away from coal. The GCEL is sufficiently robust for AXA to use it as a key component of our new climate strategy.” (Sylvain Vanston, Group Corporate Responsibility, AXA)
- “This research is potentially worth millions of dollars to investors. The depth of analysis is superb.” (Tom Sanzillo, Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis, IEEFA)
- “The financial market needs this important information on the ‘coal share’ of portfolios in order to meet the necessities of global climate protection.” (Prof. Claudia Kemfert, Head of Energy, Economics Institute DIW Berlin)
Portfolio managers, academics, journalists and NGOs can use the customizable online database to research the ‘Who is Who’ of the coal industry. The GCEL provides the latest information on companies’ annual coal production, their coal share of revenue, their installed coal-fired capacity and coal share of power generation. It enables users to see which companies are expanding their coal activities and who the biggest coal players are in certain markets. The database will be published on the webpage coalexit.org. This webpage already provides information on a key part of the coal universe, the top 120 coal plant developers worldwide.
Urgewald is best known for its successful coal divestment campaigns on the Norwegian Government Pension Fund and Allianz, one of the world’s largest insurance companies.
Up to now, coal companies could rely on banks, insurers and investors to provide financial services to them or to buy their bonds and shares. Together with other NGOs, Urgewald calls on the finance industry to blacklist coal companies.
