Two out-of-home (OOH) posters for HSBC, located in Bristol and London, have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for greenwashing.
While the first poster claimed that the bank would provide a $1 trillion investment to help clients transition to net zero, the second poster pledged to plant 2 million trees to ‘lock in’ 1.5 million tonnes of carbon.
The advertising watchdog received 45 complaints, including from Adfree Cities, who challenged whether both ads were misleading because they omitted significant information about HSBC’s contribution to carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions.
The corporation responded to the complaints by stating that the financing of greenhouse gas-emitting industries was required during the transition to net zero, and so the bank’s continued investment in those industries adhered to the aims of a transition to net zero.
HSBC also claimed that it intended to reduce absolute oil and gas financed emissions by 34% and that it would decrease financed emissions intensity for the power and utilities sector by 75% by 2030.
“They planned to phase out their financing of thermal coal by 2030 in the European Union and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, and by 2040 in the rest of the world,” the ASA added.
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Nevertheless, the ad authority said the basis of environmental claims must be clear and that unqualified claims could mislead if they omitted significant information.
The ASA noted that the bank’s 2021 annual report indicated that it intended to invest between 750 billion US dollars (£660 million) and one trillion US dollars in helping its clients transitioning to net zero.
However, the authority also found that HSBC’s current financed emissions – emissions related to the customers it financed – stood at the equivalent of about 65.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year for oil and gas alone, based on the information available at the time the report had been prepared.
“We understood that figure was likely to be much higher once other carbon-intensive industries such as power and utilities, construction, transport, and coal mining had been analysed and included,” the ASA said.
“Despite the initiatives highlighted in the ads, HSBC was continuing to significantly finance investments in businesses and industries that emitted notable levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses.
“We did not consider consumers would know that was the case and we therefore considered it was material information that was likely to affect consumers’ understanding of the ads’ overall message, and so should have been made clear in the ads.”
As a result the ASA concluded that the ads omitted material information, were misleading and should therefore be taken down.
Adfree Cities campaign group representative, Robbie Gillett, added: “This is a significant moment in the fight to prevent banks from greenwashing their image.
“HSBC can no longer ply us with ads pretending they are green while continuing to bankroll climate breakdown in the background.”
