Bank of America today announced a new greenhouse gas emissions reduction commitment covering their office facilities.

While I welcome Bank of America’s continued acknowledgment that reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions is critical for combating the climate crisis, Bank of America must move quickly beyond commitments to reduce the carbon footprint of direct energy consumption by their offices and set ambitious targets to address the much larger carbon footprint of Bank of America’s financing of coal and other dirty energy.  The climate footprint of Bank of America’s financing activities is estimated to be one hundred times larger than the size of its operational carbon footprint.

By profiling efforts to address  the GHG emissions from their internal operations while quietly  ignoring the GHG impacts of the billions of dollars that the bank provides each year for the extraction and burning of dirty fossil fuels like coal, Bank of America is at risk of misleading the public as to the  true climate impacts of the company’s business.

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