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January - June 2024

By Market Forces

April 28^th, 2024

Thank you so much for your ongoing and generous support for Market Forces. Our campaigns to kick finance out of fossil fuels are having an impact, thanks to you! Here is an update on our work and progress in 2024 so far.

From the Tiwi Islands to Japan

We organised an empowering trip to Japan and South Korea for Tiwi Islands Traditional Owners. Senior Elder Pirrawayingi Puruntatameri, Traditional Owner Therese Bourke, and human rights advocate Antonia Burke told banks and government institutions backing Santos’ Barossa gas project to end their support, and protect lands, water and cultural heritage.

We secured meetings with the three Japanese megabanks funding Santos: SMBC, Mizuho and MUFG, which are all among the biggest financiers of fossil fuels globally.

The South Korean government and export credit agencies declined to meet with the Tiwi Traditional Owners so they organised a press conference at the National Assembly, which was widely reported in Korean news.

This was the first time the Japanese government and megabanks had heard directly from the Traditional Owners about Barossa's risks and impacts and how they will continue to fight to stop the project. The Traditional Owners said they could not have done this without Market Forces and they thanked Market Forces and donors for their support.

With Santos likely seeking further financing commitments over the next year, the banks will no longer be able to ignore the human faces impacted by Santos’ destructive gas expansion plans. In fact, just a few weeks after the trip, SMBC announced a commitment to significantly improve environmental, social and human rights due diligence requirements.

K-POP (+ Market Forces) for the win!

Following months of work from Market Forces, including informing and collaborating with activist Korean pop fans, Kpop4planet, Hyundai confirmed in April it had cancelled an agreement to buy aluminium from Adaro, as Adaro’s planned smelter would be powered by coal. This is a big, people-powered win that ramps up the pressure on Adaro – a major Indonesian coal miner seeking to diversify into minerals production – to drop its dirty new coal power plans.

Following this major campaign win, we focused our campaign on Adaro’s financial backers, publicising the reputational risks involved with the coal company.

We collaborated with Enter Nusantara and Greenpeace for a series of actions leading up to Adaro's AGM. This included activists and volunteers riding bikes along a route visiting banks financing Adaro, playing games to raise awareness about these banks' continued funding of coal. We also staged a 'celebration' after The Toxic Bond Initiative listed Adaro's bond as one of the 30 dirtiest in the world. We presented Adaro's Dirty 30 Bond award in front of Adaro's building with a giant cake featuring a 'zentai' creature representing the ghost of Adaro's destructive business inside. We also held an action out the front of Adaro’s AGM.

We’ve also been engaging with Adaro's potential lenders and investors, with one major bank giving a strong indication it will not assist Adaro in raising further debt. We coordinated with partners working on the Citibank campaign to raise questions about Adaro at Citi’s AGM and participated in a global week of action in Jakarta, coordinating with Enter Nusantara.

Following all this pressure, Adaro's CEO announced that Adaro will not expand its thermal coal mining portfolio and will only focus on its current thermal coal mines. The Adaro CEO stated thermal coal's contribution to the company will decrease, being replaced by other businesses.

While Adaro's plan to not expand its thermal coal operations is a win, its “decarbonisation” plan actually involves significant metallurgical coal expansion and the construction of a new coal-fired power plant to power an aluminium smelter, with renewable energy only playing a minor role in the company’s plans – demonstrating the need for more pressure.

Woodside suffers world record-breaking climate protest vote

In a world record-breaking result, 58% of Woodside’s shareholders rejected Woodside’s dangerous climate plan at the company’s biggest day, its annual general meeting. Market Forces has been working with shareholders, super fund members and movement partners for years to ramp up this pressure.

In January, we filed two shareholder statements encouraging Woodside and Santos shareholders to vote against the companies’ remuneration plans at their AGMs. In our briefings to investors, we called out Santos and Woodside’s climate-wrecking fossil fuel expansion plans and the massive executive bonuses that incentivise this activity. Along with others in the movement, we also made the case for votes against the companies’ board chairs, a demand that was met by some of the world’s biggest investors. We worked with community members, Traditional Owners and other organisations to challenge Santos and Woodside directly at their AGMs.

Calling on AustralianSuper to be super

In late March, we launched a campaign on AustralianSuper, raising pressure on the fund to publicly demand an end to Woodside's oil and gas expansion plans.

AustralianSuper is the largest super fund in Australia and one of Woodside's top five investors.

We mobilised 40 civil society organisations to call on AustralianSuper to vote against Woodside's dodgy climate plan and growth-focused bonus scheme, as well as the board chair ultimately responsible for them. AustralianSuper voted against Woodside’s climate plan, but backed the company’s chair, showing more pressure is needed.

Highlighting Santos' human rights risks at Citi's AGM

Market Forces worked with faith-based investors in the USA and Tiwi Traditional Owners to highlight the human rights concerns related to Citi’s financing of Santos. Citi faced a global day of action, including a protest in Melbourne, while 25% of its investors supported a shareholder proposal for enhanced human rights reporting that put the heat on Citi’s lending to Santos and other companies.

UPDATING CLIMATE WRECKERS

In late May we completed our third update to the Climate Wreckers Index, exposing Australian super funds' investments in the global companies with the biggest fossil fuel expansion plans. For the first time, we compared that with their clean energy investments. This report reveals super funds’ dirtiest investments and puts pressure on the industry to drive change at fossil fuel companies, and divest from them where this fails.

ART finally acts to exclude thermal coal

Australia's second-largest super fund, Australian Retirement Trust, implemented an investment exclusion on thermal coal companies. This locked into policy what thousands of members have been demanding from the fund.

Making progress against international fossil fuel backers

As detailed on our new Asia Shareholder Action microsite, we filed the world’s first (as far as we can tell!) shareholder proposals calling for companies to disclose board climate-competency assessments with Chubu Electric and the Japanese megabanks (Mizuho Financial Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, SMBC Group). We also filed proposals seeking disclosure about the assessment of client transition plans at the Japanese megabanks, following significant shareholder support for similar proposals in Australia last year.

SMBC announced a Japanese-first policy ruling out general corporate finance to thermal coal mining companies, meaning it can no longer finance companies like Whitehaven Coal. While Japanese banks had already exited relationships with individual coal miners and told us they wouldn’t lend to them in future, this clear-cut policy leaves no room for backsliding and sets a precedent we can use to pressure other banks.

Meanwhile MUFG set a clear target to phase out all thermal coal mining exposure, and announced more detail on how it will engage with high-emitting clients and escalate action if those clients fail to transition. This last point in particular is a step towards where we are pushing all our bank targets at the moment.

In the last week of May, we organised a global action against MUFG across nine countries, involving 30 organisations worldwide. The action called on MUFG to stop finance for new fossil fuel projects and respect the human rights of First Nations and communities around the world.

Banks all claim they will assess clients’ climate change transition plans, but none have provided enough detail to prove they will only continue to finance companies with plans credibly aligned with a 1.5°C warming pathway. This will be a big focus of our campaigning for the rest of the year and beyond.

Taking on big LNG

In February we coordinated a Valentine's email action to Japanese companies involved in US Gulf LNG projects. This included a special delivery bringing a message from communities impacted by these dirty LNG projects to Mitsubishi Corp and JERA’s offices in Texas.

To coincide with GE Vernova Investor Day in March, we arranged a truck billboard with a Bangladeshi artist design in New York and Boston. The truck drove around GE’s headquarters in Boston. In New York, it drove around the NYSE and some key investors' offices. We also sent an investor briefing to GE’s investors and had our supporters flood GE Vernova’s LinkedIn with comments expressing concern with their gas business. The next day, GE Vernova turned off comments.

Ramping up the pressure on Australia’s big banks

Building on the 2023 landmark policy progression from Australia’s biggest bank, Commonwealth Bank (formerly Australia’s largest funder of fossil fuels), we have dialled up our pressure on Australia’s remaining ‘big three’ banks.

We’ve also turned up the heat on Australia’s other clear laggard, ANZ. Following this increased pressure, ANZ published a policy update, finally joining its peers in ruling out direct finance for new and expanded oil and gas extraction projects. ANZ’s update makes it the last of Australia’s big four banks to rule out lending to the Papua LNG project. ANZ also announced it will not take on any new oil and gas client that is not already on the bank’s books.

We also worked to secure a commitment from the Bank of South Pacific to rule out financing the proposed Papua LNG project, pursued by TotalEnergies, Santos and ExxonMobil. Bank of South Pacific was an ardent supporter of the development of Papua LNG, and we supported the Centre for Environmental Law and Community Rights (CELCOR), a Papua New Guinean NGO, to lodge a written statement with BSP and attend the bank's AGM, where the bank ruled out support for Papua LNG.

We had another significant win in June when the National Australia Bank (NAB) disclosed that it will require fossil fuel companies to have Paris-aligned climate transition plans in place from October next year. We are still working to secure more concrete details to ensure this policy will cut off all finance to companies planning new fossil fuel projects.

OUR NEW CAMPAIGN ON APA - KEY TO FRACKING IN THE BEETALOO

We launched a new campaign on APA Group, Australia’s largest gas pipeline operator. APA Group is planning to construct several pipelines to support extensive fracking in the Beetaloo Basin by Empire Energy and Tamboran Resources. As by far the most likely of very few potential Beetaloo pipeline developers, kicking APA Group out of this project could have huge ramifications for plans to open up this massive new gas basin. We worked with GetUp and had hundreds of people marching from the Empire annual general meeting to APA’s office to put the company on notice. We also launched a campaign calling on UniSuper – APA’s biggest shareholder – to put pressure on APA to drop the project.

Demonstrating the rising costs of divestment

We published analysis at the start of March demonstrating coal miners Whitehaven and New Hope are having to pay through the teeth to attract debt finance, making their expansion plans all the more difficult and risky to pursue.

This analysis is a demonstration of the impact Market Forces and others have made in fossil fuel finance campaigning. With major banks forced to turn their backs on coal miners, the shrinking pool of money available to them is making it increasingly difficult – and expensive – to finance their reckless expansion plans. Whitehaven Coal, for example, has just spent the bulk of its cash on hand, plus taken out a very expensive loan, to buy two already operating metallurgical coal mines. Without taking on even more expensive debt, Whitehaven will not have the money to develop new or expanded mines for some time. In the face of rapidly increasing costs, decreasing price forecasts, and the global energy and green steel transitions gathering pace, delay could well mean death for Whitehaven’s planned new projects.

PUMPED-UP ACTIVE OWNERSHIP CLAIMS FAILING OUR CLIMATE

We released new analysis in April showing board directors of coal, oil and gas companies pushing ahead with new projects continue to be elected with an average of more than 95% of shareholder support. This shows investors' claims they are driving climate action through active ownership of the companies in their portfolios are little more than hot air. If investors want their engagement with companies to be taken seriously, they need to demonstrate a credible threat that directors overseeing and approving climate-wrecking fossil fuel expansion strategies will be voted off boards.

Holding greenwashers to account

Off the back of our submission to an Australian Senate inquiry into greenwashing, we appeared before the committee and detailed how Australia's biggest banks and super funds are greenwashing by failing to align their actions with their climate commitments, letting down their millions of customers and members. Later that day, some of our key targets – including ANZ, NAB and AustralianSuper – were hauled before the committee and scrutinised over their financial support for companies expanding fossil fuels, with some Senators citing our research and analysis in their questioning of these institutions.

Exposing fossil fuel companies on tax

We published analysis showing Australia’s biggest fossil fuel companies often pay less tax than the typical Australian worker. In many cases, they barely pay any tax at all.