PNC Bank to stop lending to mountaintop removal mining companies

The top financier of mountaintop removal coal mining announced Monday it would stop lending for projects that use the controversial mining technique. PNC Bank, which becomes the "the latest of a group of major commercial lenders that have backed away from underwriting mountaintop removal projects after pressure from environmental activists," Dylan Lovan of The Associated Press reports. Following recent announcements from other banks that they would no longer finance mountaintop removal, PNC had ascended to the top financing spot according to the Rainforest Action Network, a California-based environmental group.

PNC said it will not fund individual projects or provide credit to coal producers whose primary extraction method is mountaintop removal, which the bank said is "the subject of increasing regulatory and legislative scrutiny." In June, a group of 50 environmental activists protested the bank's ties to mountaintop removal outside PNC's downtown Lexington, Ky., branch. "We're definitely seeing this as a victory and looking at who's next," Martin Mudd, a member of the group Kentucky Mountain Justice which helped organize that protest, told Lovan.

PNC declined to say whether activists' protests prompted the change, Lovan writes. The policy change was part of a corporate responsibility document that was updated late last month. One Kentucky coal industry official acknowledged the announcement was a victory for environmentalists, but said it wouldn't have a large impact. "I think (activists) are successful in this instance, but I do not think it will reduce the amount of mountaintop mining that occurs in Kentucky," Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, told AP. (Read more)