Pick up any major Southeast Asian bank’s sustainability report and you will find a coal funding commitment. The language is confident. The dates are specific. But banks from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore are hiding behind a hazy smokescreen by funding industrial coal.
New data reveals a clear majority of people across Southeast Asian countries – Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore – want bank funding to end for all companies, including coal, that are making climate change worse.
The first nationally representative opinion poll on climate change and coal financing in Southeast Asia, conducted by YouGov and commissioned by clean energy finance organization Market Forces, is revealing.
Around two in three people in Singapore (69 percent) and Indonesia (66 percent), and three in five Malaysians (59 percent), expect that a bank’s commitment to stop financing new coal applies to all coal power plants – including industrial ones – built to power nickel and aluminum smelters.
Put simply, most people want banks to end the smoke and mirrors.
