Good news: PNC Bank decided to walk the talk!

In a recent post, “Why I am not a fan of PNC  Bank?“, I explained why I switched my position from being an admirer of PNC Bank to pretty much not wanting to have anything to do with this bank.

My change of heart had to do with PNC’s continuous funding for  “Mountain Top Removal” (MTR) mining.
PNC’s involvement in the funding of Companies practicing MTR was exposed by a report authored  by the Rainforest Action Network which analyzed the investments in MTR operations of 9 large US based banks, one of them being PNC Financial Group.

On October 25th, PNC Bank posted an updated version of its 2010 Corporate Responsibility Policy. On page 4 of the updated Corporate Responsibility Policy document, PNC states the following:

“MTR is the subject of increasing regulatory and legislative scrutiny, with a focus on the permitting of MTR mines. While this extraction method is permitted, PNC will not provide funding to individual MTR projects, nor will PNC provide credit to coal producers whose primary extraction method is MTR.”

You can find the full updated Corporate Responsibility Policy of PNC Bank right here.
Of course, a Corporate Responsibility Policy is a statement of intention and sometimes reality has strange ways to interfere with intentions.
The leadership of PNC is sticking to its core values and is announcing its intention of moving away from investing in MTR Operations.

This is great news and we will have to observe and possibly wait for next year’s report from the Rainforest Action Network to see whether PNC actually stuck to its words and stopped investing in Mountain Top Removal Mining.