A pair of Keswick activists have taken part in another protest outside Barclays Bank in the town and called for a boycott.
Last Friday, Allan Todd, of Left Unity, and veteran campaigner Jo Alberti, took part in Fridays For Future, an international climate strike movement. They accused Barclays of failing to live up to its pledges following the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and branded it a “Dirty Bank”.
Mr Todd said it had invested $145bn in fossil fuels, put $27bn into existing dirty energy projects since 2020 and increased funding by 32 per cent in what he called “extreme” fossil fuel projects such as fracking, tar sands and arctic oil and gas.
Barclays responded: “We are aligning our entire financing portfolio to support the goals of the Paris Agreement – significantly scaling up green financing, directly investing in new green technologies and helping clients in key sectors change their business models to reduce their climate change impact.
“By 2025, we will reduce the emissions intensity of our power portfolio by 30 per cent, and reduce absolute emissions of our energy portfolio by 15 per cent. Increasing at pace, our capital markets business has already facilitated £46bn of green finance.
“We are one of the only banks globally investing our own capital – £175m – into innovative, green start-ups. By deploying finance in this way, we are accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy and will become net zero by 2050.”
