The two Fridays for Future activists Evelyn Acham from Uganda and Luisa Neubauer will meet with Christian Sewing, head of Deutsche Bank, for a discussion next Tuesday. As the Tagesspiegel learned from Fridays for Future, Sewing had offered a meeting after Neubauer had massively criticized the bank’s financing of fossil energy projects at the general meeting, in particular funds for the French energy group Totalenergies. Totalenergies is currently building the longest heated crude oil pipeline in the world and the corresponding oil production in Uganda with the EACOP.
The East African Crude Oil Pipeline is designed to transport oil from and around Lake Albert some 1445 kilometers to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. The Tagesspiegel spoke to people affected by the project in Uganda. The pipeline’s oil, most of which is destined for export, is produced in the famous Murchison Falls National Park, among other places. Totalenergies makes the biggest profit from the project.
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Neubauer had accused the Deutsche Bank boss of “Olympic greenwashing” because he was in favor of sustainability, but Deutsche Bank had given “loans worth $1.8 billion to Totalenergies” since 2015, one of the largest oil and gas companies gas companies worldwide, who is currently planning the opening of new oil and gas fields in more than 20 countries.
Ugandan Evelyn Acham calls on Deutsche Bank to “immediately freeze all new financing that fuels environmental and climate destruction. This affects investments in companies that pursue activities that are not compatible with climate goals, such as Total.”
Luisa Neubauer announced: “We want to know whether Christian Sewing wants to get out of the fossil business in time to stop the worst climate catastrophes.” So far, the bank has hardly withdrawn from fossil projects.
In its current report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that global annual CO2 emissions must fall by 2025 at the latest and be halved by 2030 if there is still a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. The International Energy Agency declared more than a year ago that in order to achieve the Paris climate target, no new fossil energy sources should be developed.
