Bank of England targeted in Extinction Rebellion protest

The Bank of England was targeted by protesters from Extinction Rebellion today (April 1), who splattered the front entrance of the central bank with “fake oil”.

Extinction Rebellion said the protests – which also targeted commercial banks in London – were “designed to expose the role of banks in the climate and ecological crisis”.

City of London police said they had made one arrest for criminal trespass and three arrests for criminal damage. “We are currently policing a small protest outside the @bankofengland,” police tweeted at 11.27am local time.

The BoE declined to comment.

Protestors splashed the ‘oil’ on the outer wall of the central bank’s Threadneedle Street headquarters, part of the original structure built to the design of architect John Soane in 1828.

Extinction Rebellion said it was targeting the BoE for failing to regulate the banks’ funding of high-carbon activities, as well as the central bank’s own holdings of assets that are consistent with 3.5°C of warming by the end of the century.

The 3.5°C figure comes from the BoE’s own analysis and disclosures on the climate impact of its portfolio. It currently holds around £20 billion ($27.6 billion) in corporate bonds, many of them issued by high-carbon industries.

Executive director Sarah Breeden has said the central bank’s portfolio is “clearly not” aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global temperature increases below 2°C, and ideally 1.5°C. The BoE is currently considering how to add green conditionality to its corporate bond facility. It may also buy green government bonds, when these are issued by the UK government.

In its statement, Extinction Rebellion cited a ‘green central banking scorecard’ published by the campaign group Positive Money on March 31. The analysis takes a dim view of G20 central banks’ efforts on climate to date, finding most have gone little beyond research and advocacy.

Positive Money criticises central banks for defending the principle of “market neutrality”, or trying to avoid affecting the relative prices of assets while implementing policy. The issue is one focus of the European Central Bank’s ongoing strategic review.

ECB executive board member Isabel Schnabel has conceded that high-carbon industries are more likely than other sectors to fund themselves through bond markets, which leads to a carbon bias in the central bank’s collateral framework and corporate bond-buying scheme.