NatWest has been slammed for investing at least £17 million in the UK’s biggest supplier of coal to the cement industry, despite pressure on banks to stop financing fossil fuels.

According to documents seen by DeSmog, the bank ploughed money into Hatfield Energy, which imported at least 350,000 tonnes of coal in 2025.

Experts and activists have accused NatWest of undermining its own climate targets by supporting coal use.

In 2020, the year that NatWest was the exclusive banking sponsor of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, it drew up a climate transition plan that it claimed would limit its financing of fossil fuels.

The bank pledged to no longer lend to and underwrite companies “with more than 15 percent of activities related to thermal and lignite coal” unless those companies had climate transition plans in place by the end of 2021 that aligned with the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The bank also vowed to end relationships with customers that contribute to “UK coal production, coal fired generation and coal related infrastructure”. It promised to do this by October 2024, one day after the UK phased out coal-fired electricity production. NatWest’s definition of “coal related infrastructure” includes the kind of storage facilities maintained by Hatfield Energy in the UK.

Hatfield Energy had no climate transition plan in place by 2023 – importing at least 210,000 tonnes of coal during the year. The company claims it had an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policy in place in 2023, and shared undated documents with DeSmog.

The deals NatWest made with Hatfield in 2023 were valid for three years, well after the bank’s own self-imposed October 2024 deadline.

However, NatWest’s climate plans included loopholes to exclude companies with an annual turnover of less than £50 million, and commodity traders.

“Sadly, this isn’t surprising. Like some other banks, NatWest has a number of large loopholes allowing it to invest in fossil fuel projects by investing in commodity traders that buy and sell the coal,” said Daniel Therkelsen, campaign manager at Coal Action Network. “It needs a more comprehensive exclusion policy.”

In October 2023, NatWest provided credit to Hatfield Energy to import $650,000 (£485,000) worth of “solid fuel”, valid until January 2025. Days later, the bank traded £10 million of Hatfield’s cash for U.S. Dollars, which Hatfield would need to buy coal on the international market, although it’s unclear if this was the exact purpose of the trade.

“Heavy industry like cement is a major driver of global heating, and NatWest’s continued financing of companies heavily reliant on coal such as Hatfield is adding to a crisis that is already hitting people’s lives,” said Elliott Thornton, senior research manager at ShareAction, a responsible investment campaign group.

“We’re seeing it in dangerous heatwaves, in flooding that damages homes, and in insurance costs that keep climbing.”

In February this year, NatWest loosened its lending rules to allow investment in new fossil fuel projects. Simultaneously, it claimed to have decarbonised its portfolio by 39 percent compared to 2019.

Hatfield Energy is the UK’s largest supplier of coal to the cement industry, and told DeSmog that coal trading made up around 50 percent of its income in 2025.

Responding to DeSmog’s request for comment, a spokesperson for NatWest said, “we don’t comment on individual customers,” adding that the bank remained committed to its 2050 net zero target and its 2030 interim target. 

Mark Hatfield, director of both Hatfield Energy and parent company Roy Hatfield Holdings, confirmed that the companies had no climate transition plan in place in 2023, but said they were trying to reduce their coal trading activities.

Hatfield Energy’s sustainability policy states that it is “committed to operating in a socially and environmentally responsible manner” but does not mention coal, the company’s primary source of income.

UK Cement, Powered by Coal

While the UK phased out coal for the production of electricity in 2024, the country burned around 400,000 tonnes to make 7.3 million tonnes of cement that year. 

The UK is an outlier in Western Europe in still using coal for cement production. Most other countries in the region burn fossil gas, which produces fewer emissions, to create the high temperatures needed to make cement. Globally, only 37 percent of cement production is still powered by coal.

DeSmog’s analysis shows NatWest’s financing of Hatfield Energy’s coal imports contributed to the equivalent emissions of anywhere between 468,600 and 617,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

Cement is one of the world’s most popular building materials, and making it accounted for roughly eight percent of global carbon emissions in 2025.

“The fact that coal is being used in UK cement without a clear pathway to phase it out is itself short-sighted,” Therkelsen added.

“The EU is bringing in mandatory carbon lifecycle reporting for buildings, incentivising construction companies to demand lower-carbon cement. The UK is refusing to keep up, let alone lead a sustainable construction sector. That means our high-carbon cement will lose the EU market in the medium term.”

NatWest’s Climate Backtrack

In February, NatWest removed its ban on financing oil and gas exploration, extending its lending to include fossil fuel majors that do not have climate transition plans. It claimed this move was consistent with its broader aim to halve emissions from its investment portfolio.

Activists, including those at ShareAction, suggest otherwise. In April, a group of 70 climate scientists sent an open letter to the bank’s board, which was presented by ShareAction at NatWest’s annual general meeting the same month.

There is “investor concern that the bank tearing up its fossil fuel policy risks accelerating exposure to physical risks like flooding and heatwaves, while storing up long-term financial instability for the future,” said Jeanne Martin, head of banking programmes at ShareAction.

In 2025, NatWest invested more than $2.5 billion (£1.9 billion) in fossil fuel companies, according to the 2026 Banking on Climate Chaos report, a project from eight climate non-profits which calculates the amount invested by the world’s largest banks into the fossil fuel industry on an annual basis.

It found that the world’s 65 largest banks heavily expanded their fossil fuel financing in 2025, committing $906 billion (£675 billion) to industry companies – $65 billion (£48 billion) more than in 2024

Last year’s report found that these banks had invested $7.9 trillion (£5.9 trillion) in fossil fuel projects in the decade after the Paris Agreement.

These revelations come amid wider pressure on the financial sector to divest from fossil fuels. In 2012, 350.org, an environmental pressure group, launched one of the earliest fossil fuel divestment campaigns targeting banks, a movement which has burgeoned since.

“Banks keep telling us they’re committed to climate,” Banking on Climate Chaos co-author Diogo Silva, a campaign lead at BankTrack, said. “Then they abandon their own policies the moment political pressure mounts. Voluntary pledges have had their chance. We need binding rules – not promises.”