Wall Street says climate activists' arguments are flawed

Against a backdrop of intensifying climate protests targeting Wall Street, the heavyweights of US finance are pushing back against what they characterize as a fundamentally flawed debate.

For more than a month now, scores of activists have mounted near-daily protests outside the Manhattan headquarters of Citigroup Inc., with video footage showing tense scenes and a memo to staff urging employees to stay cool. The campaign — dubbed “Summer of Heat” — promises a steady escalation of disruptions and says its ultimate goal is to “shut down Wall Street.”

Activists block the entrance of the Citigroup headquarters during the “Summer of Heat” campaign on June 28.

Far from caving in to such pressure, Wall Street is coalescing around a clear message: Private money will only invest in the clean-energy transition to the extent that it makes economic sense.

“Finance has a big, big role to play,” said Emmanuel Lagarrigue, a partner at KKR & Co. who’s also its co-head of climate. But, “if you really want this to succeed, if you really want private capital to come in” and support the green transition, “it has to create returns at the same time as it decarbonizes. It’s not either or, it’s both.”

Ultimately, “if we subsidize our way through the transition, it’s going to stall at some point,” he said in an interview.

Versions of the same message are being repeated across the global finance industry. KKR co-founder Henry Kravis said last month that climate activists who “would like to push a button and have no hydrocarbons” simply “don’t understand the facts.” Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer CS Venkatakrishnan has said the world “can’t go cold turkey” on oil and gas. 

At JPMorgan Chase & Co., CEO Jamie Dimon has called it “wrong” and “enormously naïve” to expect that fossil-fuel projects be dropped, while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO David Solomon has made clear that oil and gas remain a “hugely important“ sector for his bank. UBS Group AG CEO Sergio Ermotti has warned against expecting banks to act as the “climate police.”

On the other side of the climate debate, activists warn that the planet is reaching dangerous tipping points as rising emissions trigger increasingly deadly floods, wildfires and droughts. Continued bankrolling of the fossil fuels that directly add to those emissions is contributing to a climate catastrophe, they say.

To underline their position, organizers of the “Summer of Heat” campaign have added slogans such as “hot people hate Wall Street” and “eat the rich” to their website.

There’s so far little to indicate that the two sides are anywhere close to finding common ground.

Earlier this month, Citigroup agreed to hold a call with the organizers of the climate protests targeting its Manhattan office. It was the first meeting since the campaign started on June 10. 

The encounter, which lasted a little over an hour, ended in a stalemate punctuated by moments of acrimony, according to Alec Connon, one of the main organizers of the protests. He and his fellow activists left determined to continue their campaign against Citigroup for the rest of the summer, Connon said.

Among Citigroup representatives on the call was its chief sustainability officer, Val Smith, according to a list provided by protest organizers. 

In an emailed response to a request for comment, Smith said Citigroup has a “long-standing record of fostering open dialogue and reaching constructive solutions with a range of stakeholders, including shareholders and government officials.” 

She also said that the “energy transition is dependent on many dimensions — it isn’t binary as many activists suggest, which makes finding a middle ground challenging.” 

Against that backdrop, Citigroup is “committed to executing our climate strategy,” and “prioritizing action that is most sustainable for the global economy,” said Smith, who didn’t directly comment on the meeting with protesters in her response.

The bank has previously contested allegations by “Summer of Heat” organizers that identify Citigroup as the world’s biggest financier of new oil and gas projects since the Paris climate agreement was struck in late 2015. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Citigroup is the sixth-largest provider of loans to oil, gas and coal over the period. So far in 2024, it ranks as the 12th biggest, the data show.

Citigroup and other Wall Street banks say their goal is to stay with fossil-fuel producers through the transition to a lower-carbon economy.

Climate activists note that clients of Citigroup include Saudi Aramco and Exxon Mobil Corp. Amin Nasser, the CEO of Aramco, said in March that talk of phasing out oil is a “fantasy.” And Exxon has said it expects oil demand to be roughly the same in 2050 as it is today, with CEO Darren Woods noting in May that any suggestion oil and gas should be a declining industry is “wrong.”

The International Energy Agency says that by 2050, unabated fossil fuels should account for just 5% of the total energy supply in order to achieve the goal of limiting global warming to no more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Since the Paris climate agreement was struck at the end of 2015, the world’s biggest banks have provided $3.5 trillion of loans to oil, gas and coal. They’ve arranged a further $2 trillion of fossil-fuel bonds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

On July 9, a group of Democratic Senators targeted JPMorgan’s Dimon in a letter that accuses Wall Street’s biggest bank of backsliding on climate commitments. At the same time, JPMorgan and Citigroup are among global banks to have been singled out in the Republican Party’s ongoing attacks on financial firms for their perceived embrace of environmental and social issues. 

JPMorgan, which is both the biggest underwriter of ESG debt and the third-largest arranger of fossil-fuel bonds so far this year, is accustomed to getting “a lot of noise from both sides,” Chuka Umunna, the lender’s head of EMEA ESG and green economy investment banking, said at the Bloomberg Sustainable Finance Forum last month. 

“We’ve got to be clear about what our role is in this,” he said. Wall Street’s job “isn’t to sit in judgment on clients and what they’re doing.”