Société Générale Won IFR "Bank for Sustainability" Award
Société Générale has recently won the prestigious IFR "Bank for Sustainability" award and has been recognized in several categories at Global Finance's Sustainable Finance Awards 2024. These awards recognize the Group's commitment to sustainable finance and its global sustainable development strategy.
Speeding up the energy transition proved challenging amid difficult market conditions but Société Générale’s insightful and intelligent approach put it ahead of its peers. The bank introduced a range of new measures and reaped the rewards of initiatives put in place in the past two years.
“We have three blocks: we build, we transform and we accelerate,” said Pierre Palmieri, Société Générale’s deputy CEO. “Each banker is becoming an ESG banker and we embed ESG matters in all our businesses.”
Acceleration requires a focus on innovation and new frontiers – in areas such as natural capital, water scarcity, and the circular economy – as well as decarbonizing the bank’s existing businesses and acting responsibly as a bank and employer.
Société Générale’s new management team presented the bank’s 2026 strategic plan in mid-September, which included announcements on fossil fuels that NGO Reclaim Finance said made Société Générale one of the most advanced banks in terms of climate change by treating gas the same way as oil.
To speed the decarbonization of its existing businesses, the company took a decisive step to reduce its exposure to the upstream oil and gas sector by 80% by 2030 compared to 2019 with an intermediary step of 50% in 2025 from the same baseline which was increased from a 20% target.
That was combined with an absolute reduction target for greenhouse gas emissions across the entire oil and gas chain (for Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions) of 70% by 2030 compared with 2019.
Société Générale also committed to stop financing upstream oil and gas pure players and new greenfield projects and reinforce engagement with oil and gas clients based on their transition ambitions, which has already led to difficult decisions.
As well as scaling down existing fossil fuel exposure, the company is rotating into new businesses and created a new €1bn transition investment fund with €700m of equity and €300m of debt, which Pierre Palmieri sees as one of SG’s most significant achievements of the year.
The fund will finance the emerging leaders of the energy transition in low-carbon businesses such as renewable energy, carbon capture and storage, and hydrogen, focus on nature-based solutions to restore and protect biodiversity and provide impact financing for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
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