Westpac is changing its lending rules to make it easier to finance the gas industry even as it demands big emitting customers provide more details of their plans to wean themselves off fossil fuels or risk having funding stopped.
The bank has briefed investors that it intends to change the global warming target that it uses to assess energy transition plans, loosening those ambitions from 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels to simply match the “goals of the Paris Agreement”, which refers to “well below 2 degrees”.