Climate activists force NatWest chair to halt AGM – Daily Business

Protestors outside the NatWest AGM (pic: DB Media Services)

Climate activists today forced NatWest chairman Rick Haythornthwaite to adjourn the bank’s AGM by staging a demonstration over the banks’s decision to soften its policies on fossil fuel investments.

A few minutes into the chairman’s address to shareholders, nine protestors bearing t-shirts with the slogan “No More Oil” stood and began singing.

Despite repeated appeals for them to sit and ask questions later, the demonstration continued.

One man said: “We are asking for the board to move back to its position of no funding fossil fuel companies.”

He said they wanted a commitment from the board at today’s meeting.

Mr Haythornthwaite replied: “That is not going to happen.”

The protestors were issued out of the conference room at NatWest HQ at Gogarburn. Despite the chairman forbidding photography, one filmed the demonstration.

NatWest, parent of Royal Bank of Scotland, disclosed in February that it had loosened some of the restrictions it had imposed on financing of clients’ fossil fuel activities.

This includes lifting a ban on working with oil and gas majors that do not have climate transition plans aligned with the 2015 Paris agreement to limit global warming.

The bank said at the time that its changes were a response to the “evolving policy environment”, but investor campaign group Share Action has warned that “this kind of backtracking has real consequences”.

Rick Haythornthwaite: we take climate change seriously (pic: DB Media Services)

During questions, Mr Haythornthwaite offered to meet representatives of Share Action. He offered a “personal response” on the energy transition by saying all his properties were electric,.

“I take climate change very, very seriously, as do all of the board,” he said. “We have to wrestle with how we balance supporting our clients with transition and managing a complex policy environment.”

He said the board was committed to meeting its targets. “Those commitments have not gone away. We have gone further by raising funding to customers on transition commitments.”

He added that the “overwhelming balance of our investments remain on renewables and de-carbonisation” and that just 0.6% is related to oil and gas.

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