Questions écrites à Société Générale Assemblée générale 2021

The document consists of ten sets of questions and demands addressed to Société Générale, urging the bank to align its financing with the 1.5°C climate goal. The authors criticize the bank's continued support for coal (specifically mentioning Glencore and EPH), unconventional oil and gas, and projects in sensitive areas like the Arctic, the Amazon, and Mozambique. They also call for a zero-deforestation policy regarding imported soy and for the bank to vote against Total's climate strategy.

• The authors allege that Société Générale's coal exclusion policy is ineffective because it applies only to legal entities directly operating assets, allowing the bank to continue financing parent companies like Glencore, which produced 130 million tonnes of coal in 2020.
• Between 2016 and 2020, Société Générale provided 73 billion US$ in financing to the fossil fuel industry, with 19 billion US$ provided in 2020 alone.
• The bank is criticized for providing over 17 billion US$ in financing to unconventional oil and gas since the COP21, including more than 7 billion US$ in 2020.
• Société Générale acts as a financial advisor for two LNG terminal projects in the United States, Rio Grande LNG and Driftwood LNG, which the authors argue contradicts French government calls to exit shale hydrocarbons.
• The authors argue that Société Générale's Arctic exclusion policy is insufficient because its 50% threshold exempts large diversified companies like Total and uses a definition of the Arctic that covers less than half of the projects identified by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP).
• The document urges the bank to vote against Total's climate strategy, claiming it is incompatible with a 1.5°C scenario as Total plans to increase gas production by 30% by 2030 and allocate 80% of its 2030 investment expenditures to oil and gas.
• Société Générale is called upon to withdraw from the Mozambique LNG project, where it provided 500 million US$ in loans, citing severe human rights violations and the humanitarian crisis following attacks in Palma.
• The authors highlight that Société Générale provided nearly 2 billion dollars in financing between 2016 and 2019 to soy traders (ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus) linked to deforestation in the Cerrado ecosystem.

APA

Reclaim Finance (2021). Questions écrites à Société Générale Assemblée générale 2021. https://reclaimfinance.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Société-Générale-–-questions-écrites-2021.pdf

Chicago

Reclaim Finance. Questions écrites à Société Générale Assemblée générale 2021. 2021. https://reclaimfinance.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Société-Générale-–-questions-écrites-2021.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |author=Reclaim Finance |title=Questions écrites à Société Générale Assemblée générale 2021 |date=2021 |url=https://reclaimfinance.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Société-Générale-–-questions-écrites-2021.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{reclaimfinance2021questions, author = {{Reclaim Finance}}, title = {{Questions écrites à Société Générale Assemblée générale 2021}}, publisher = {Reclaim Finance}, year = {2021}, url = {https://reclaimfinance.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Société-Générale-–-questions-écrites-2021.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }