Bank of America Makes a Break from Coal

The Motley Fool reported that Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) is exiting the coal space in an “unprecedented pull-out.” The firm announced the news during its annual shareholder meeting with the release of its first coal policy.

The news outlet sums up that policy as follows:

• Climate change is real and risky.
• Bank of America Corp. has a role to play in moving America from high-carbon to low-carbon energy sources.
• Fossil fuels are and will continue to be important to our energy supply…
• …but dirty coal doesn’t have to be.
• Coal extraction companies are risky investments, and Bank of America will continue to reduce its credit exposure to these corporations.
• The bank will not finance coal mining companies that face serious environmental, health, or safety violations.
• The bank will continue to reduce its credit exposure to mountaintop removal in the Appalachian region.
• Bank of America Corp. will invest in potentially promising carbon-reducing technologies for coal, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS).
• It will continue, as it has since 2008, to consider the long-term costs of carbon in its financing decisions for new power plants.

The article also states:

While Bank of America Corp. is hardly divesting to the degree that Stanford University or 10 U.S. cities, from Ithaca to Seattle, have agreed to, this statement is a bold move for such a big company.

According to The Rainforest Action Network, one of the environmental groups pushing hardest for Bank of America to cut back on coal, the bank used to be the biggest coal financier in the country. But this latest move did a lot to change the Network’s perception of Bank of America from naughty to nice. In the Network’s recently released 2015 Coal Finance Report Card, Bank of America earned a BBB grade on coal mining, the highest score ever given to a bank.

Click here to read the full report from The Motley Fool.