JPMorgan Chase Commits To 100% Renewable Energy By 2020 & Facilitating $200 Billion In Clean Energy Financing By 2025
By Joshua S. Hill, Clean Technica.
Multinational banking giant JPMorgan Chase has announced it is committing to sourcing 100% of its energy needs from renewable energy by 2020 and a promise to facilitate $200 billion in clean financing through 2025.
For those of us who have been covering global warming science and clean technology for a while now — for me, it’s been over a decade — the role that big business and big banking has stepped into in taking a leading role in advocating for sustainable business and banking, and a transition to a low-carbon economy, has been incredibly heartening. It would be naive to imagine that these moves have been made entirely on altruistic terms — they most certainly haven’t, but more so, they don’t need to be, considering the economic value in such moves — but it has been rewarding regardless, to see big money so actively engage in sustainable business.
JPMorgan Chase, one of the oldest financial institutions in the United States with assets of $2.6 trillion, and working in over 60 countries with more than 240,000 employees, announced this week that they “have gradually and thoughtfully been increasing our commitment to sustainability for over a decade.” Over a year ago, JPMorgan Chase announced that it was backing away from investing in new coal mining projects, adding such investments to a list of “Prohibited Transactions” alongside Forced or Child Labor and Illegal Logging. Further, and vitally important when we look to see beyond the altruistic motivations for such decisions, JPMorgan Chase explained that: