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Bank of the Philippine Islands to halt all coal plant financing by 2033
- 3 years ago (2021-08-03)
- David Flin
The Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) has announced that by 2033 it aims to stop all lending to coal-fired power projects and channel more funds to renewable energy projects. Coal-fired power projects form 45 per cent of its current power generation portfolio.
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Teodoro Limcaoco, President of BPI, has said that the four priorities of the bank’s lending are sustainability, digitalisation, customer services, and consumer banking. He said that BPI’s original commitment was to halve coal financing by 2026 and eliminate it by 2037, in accordance with the Paris accord. He said that it was possible to totally phase out all remaining coal lending by 2033, with wind and solar becoming baseload power sources. “We believe energy is still an important component, a big need of this country. My belief is that renewable power is getting cheaper and cheaper to produce, is getting more economically feasible, and I think storage technology will improve very rapidly. We are looking to finance renewable power moving forward because that is what the country needs.”
To date, renewables account for 45 per cent of BPI’s power generation loan portfolio, the same proportion as that devoted to coal. The remaining 10 per cent is devoted to gas-fired projects.