Tell Citi: We want ACTION, not empty promises

This is a “Code Red for Humanity” and we need the world’s biggest climate villains to stop wrecking the climate. Citibank is the 2nd WORST banker of climate chaos, pouring $238 billion into fossil fuels from 2016-2020.

Citi should be leading efforts to right the climate wrongs they’ve fueled for so long. Will you help us remind Citibank that it’s time to deliver on its climate promises?

First Name

Last Name

Email

Zip or Postal Code

Mobile Phone Number

Send me email updates

Yes, I would like to receive SMS alerts from Rainforest Action Network

CEO

Jane

Fraser

Citigroup

Dear Ms. Fraser,

I write to you ahead of the March 1 deadline for Citi laying out its next steps for implementing its commitment to net-zero financed emissions by 2050. I recognize the importance of the direction of travel signaled by that pledge, but a 2050 commitment cannot be a fig leaf for short-term continuation of business as usual. The next steps the bank announces will show whether activists, investors and regulators should view your 2050 commitment as greenwash.

The key litmus test will be whether or not your bank ends financing for expansion of fossil fuels. As the International Energy Agency underlined in its Net Zero by 2050 scenario, the path to that goal is "narrow but still achievable" -- and requires an immediate end to new oil and gas fields, coal mines or coal plants. As you know, potential emissions from oil, gas and coal reserves already in production more than exhaust a 2°C carbon budget, and take us far beyond 1.5°C.

Citi is the #2 fossil bank in the world since the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement at the end of 2015, with $238 billion in lending and underwriting to the fossil fuel industry over 2016-20. Its 2020 totals were higher than its total in 2016, 2017 or 2018. The bank's biggest clients in terms of volume of fossil fuel financing over that period are Exxon, Occidental, Marathon, Saudi Aramco and Chevron, all of which plan massive expansion of fossil fuels.

We have been encouraged by your recent public comments acknowledging that the bank will have to drop clients that are unable or unwilling to align with a 1.5°C world -- but the bank can no longer delay these hard choices. Writing blank checks to the world's biggest expanders of fossil fuels locks us all in to a world of runaway global warming.

We welcome last year's policy ruling out new clients that are expanding coal power, and setting serious deadlines for exiting coal -- the strongest coal policy of any major U.S. bank. By contrast, we have seen some of your U.S. peer banks fail in their most recent climate steps, setting intensity-only targets that are fully compatible with expansion of fossil fuels and increases in absolute emissions -- in the decade in which we must halve absolute emissions in order to stave off the worst effects of the climate crisis.

We call on you to take concrete steps to align Citi with a world in which climate change is limited to 1.5°C and human rights are fully respected, by taking the following steps:

- Immediately end financing for expansion of fossil fuels;
- Build on the bank’s zero dates for coal power by setting 1.5°C-aligned zero dates for oil and gas production and fossil gas power; 
 -Ensure that the bank reduces absolute financed emissions each year, starting immediately, on a 1.5°C-aligned timeline, without reliance on offsets; 
- Protect our most vital carbon sinks by ending financing for deforestation, across all forest-risk commodities; and
- Immediately end financing for projects and companies that are implicated in abuses of human rights, especially Indigenous rights

The next two months present an opportunity for Citi to take a leadership position on climate and justice, and we urge you to seize it.

Kind regards,
{user_data~First Name} {user_data~Last Name}