Wells Fargo Bank on Renewable Energy
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 10. 4.06
Yup pardner, in what is believed to be the largest ever purchase by an American company, Well Fargo figures on buying 550,000 megawatt-hours of renewable energy certificates (from windpower). This will be the equivalent of 40% of their electrical energy consumption. Or put another way, it should have the equal environmental benefit of taking 75,000 cars off the road. (No mention of how many 6 horse stagecoachs that might equate to though.) This isn’t the Californian-based banker’s only green endeavour. In August of this year they put up finance for their 12th LEED certified building project. Plus they have a raft of their own eco programs, including a downloadable 20 page PDF that helps investors understand the renewable energy market. It includes all the usual suspects like solar, wind, hydro, biomass and such forth. (Was, though, a little surprised to see nuclear also to make the cut.) And at one point Business Ethics magazine even listed the bank amongst the top 10 “Best Corporate Citizens” in the US. ::Wells Fargo, via Mercury News.
I wonder if that "offsets" their investment in Mountian top removal, coal investment and destruction of the Boreal rainforest in Canada?! I think not.
Here is what R.A.N had to say:
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
San Francisco - In response to mounting market activism, Wells Fargo, the nation's fourth largest bank, launched an eleventh hour public relations campaign on Monday to stave off a planned protest at its San Francisco headquarters today. The protest went ahead as scheduled with consumer activists calling for “less PR and more progress” on global warming, endangered ecosystems and human rights.
Promoted as a “10-Point Environmental Commitment,” Wells Fargo’s press release had no policy to back it up, offered no implementation details and fell far short of industry best practices recently set by Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase. In stark contrast to policy announcements made by fellow CEOs, Wells Fargo chief executive Richard M. Kovacevich was notably AWOL from the statement leaving stakeholders feeling deserted by his lack of leadership on a range of urgent environmental and social issues.
Wells Fargo’s “environmental commitment” made no mention of global warming, ecological no-go zones or indigenous rights, and its adoption of the Equator Principles is viewed by the activist community as inherently meaningless since project finance is a negligible aspect of its business. Unlike JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo made no commitment to extend its application of the principles to include “all loans, debt and equity underwriting, financial advisories and project-linked derivative transactions.”
In addition to Wells Fargo’s poor performance on the environment, recent investigations have found bank policies and practices tantamount to economic apartheid with profits derived from social injustice and human rights abuses including predatory lending in communities of color in the United States and exploitive remittance fees for American workers sending money to their families in debt-burdened developing nations in the Global South.
But maybe I'm being too idealistic, why should we expect anything responsible from corporations?....