Recently, I sat in on the Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC) Climate Action 2026 Report Launch Information Session. I was gobsmacked.RBC is Canada’s biggest business and largest bank, and one of the largest banks in the world. And it appears they are also Canada’s largest climate activist organization, too! Their RBC Climate Action Institute has been tracking Canada’s climate performance for the past three years, and they are keen to push for moving from “ambition to execution.”But are banks authorized to be climate activists?According to Section 627.03 of the Bank Act, “No institution shall communicate or otherwise provide false or misleading information to a customer, the public, or the Commissioner.”RBC’s Climate Action report claims that “No government, no sector, no company, even no brilliant inventor can solve climate change, or even drive significant progress on their own. Climate action stands among the biggest collective needs humanity has faced. It ignores no one, and there must somehow engage everyone.”This is false and misleading.Climate change is a fact of Earth’s existence and driven by a multitude of factors, as the CLINTEL World Climate Declaration explains. Furthermore, Net Zero 2050 is unattainable, as explained by Prof. Emeritus Vaclav Smil, “The complete decarbonization of the global energy supply will be an extremely challenging undertaking of an unprecedented scale and complexity that will not be accomplished—even in the case of sustained, dedicated, and extraordinarily costly commitment—in a matter of a few decades.”.RBC also misleads the public with the claim that Canada can achieve 2050 net-zero targets through their proposed ‘climate action.’ As retired energy economist Robert Lyman, former federal public servant and diplomat, has pointed out, to attain the 2030 target, it would require that emissions decline at an annual average rate of 31.4 Mt, or a rate over 100 times faster than what they did from 2005 to 2022. Effectively, this would mean deindustrialization and economic collapse for Canada, for the ‘benefit’ of perhaps reducing global warming by 0.007 degrees Celsius by 2100.RBC rather blithely posits that in terms of electricity, “Canada has a $1 trillion challenge to power up a bigger, low-carbon power grid.” And “Canada faces the twin challenge of at least doubling and decarbonizing power capacity by 2050.” The present power grid took over 100 years to build out. Does any rational person honestly think it can be doubled in the space of 25 years?As retired energy economist, Robert Lyman, pointed out in “Insights from a Sankey Diagram” referencing Canadian government data, “Fossil fuels constitute 93 per cent of domestic energy supply. For all the publicity given to the alleged electrification of Canada, domestic electricity and renewables production provides only seven per cent of our energy production.”In June of 2022, Friends of Science Society submitted an Open Letter to RBC, critiquing their $2 trillion Net Zero transition plan. (Note: I am the Communications Manager for Friends of Science Society). The document was prepared by our team of professional engineers with knowledge of power grid operations. Based on statements in the RBC Climate Action report and the webinar’s optimism about reaching net-zero, while simultaneously doubling the grid and decarbonizing it, apparently no one at RBC read our letter. This would indicate a lack of due diligence on the part of RBC. The letter was directed to John Stackhouse, Senior Vice-President, Office of the CEO, who signed the introduction to the RBC Climate Action report..RBC’s Climate Action 2026 report references the Canadian Climate Institute over a dozen times as if it is a reliable source of independent information. In fact, the Canadian Climate Institute is an almost wholly government-funded registered charity which has received over $30 million from the federal government and is staffed by well-known climate activists.Should Canada, and Canada’s largest business, and largest bank, serving some 17 million customers, which includes individuals, all industry sectors, Canadian and US federal, provincial (state), and municipal governments, rely on information from a clearly partisan climate activist source like the Canadian Climate Institute and simply ignore insights from a team of professional engineers? One only has to look at the current winter storm crisis in Nashville, Tennessee, to understand that a decarbonized, electricity-only power and home heating plan to reach ‘net zero’ means hundreds of people will suffer and die when extreme weather strikes.I was shocked to hear RBC climate activists say they are requiring their commercial real estate landlords to incorporate a commitment to Net Zero 2040 building standards in their leases. This will drive up the cost of real estate for everyone and have no measurable effect on the planet. Further, as I understand it, the Bank Act prohibits a bank from employing any kind of undue pressure or coercion on a person, for any purpose (even 'saving' the planet), according to Section 627.04.Unfortunately for Canadians and especially Canadian people in industry and agriculture, based on the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development (ENVI) report, just released, it looks like climate compliance will be enforced by the banking sector, as shown above, unless you push back. Climate coercion via the banking sector through zealous misleading of the public on climate risks and the dubious cost-benefit of so-called ‘climate action’ must not be countenanced. Dr. Tammy Nemeth explores the implications in “Ottawa’s Green Squeeze: The ENVI Report’s Climate Finance Push” – highly recommended reading, or view this narrated Friends of Science Society PowerPoint.
