By Euronews Green
Published on
The world’s biggest banks increased their fossil fuel financing last year for the first time since 2021, a new report reveals.
The top 65 banks provided $869 billion (€751bn) to thousands of oil and gas majors in 2024 – the hottest year on record – representing a $162.5 billion (€141bn) jump from 2023.
Released today by a coalition of green groups, the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report ties this backwards trend to banks’ rapid retreat from climate commitments.
“Distract, delay, deflect, and finally defect. If needed, rinse and repeat. Banks have used this playbook to keep themselves and the fossil fuel industry flush with cash, while loading the financial system with risk and running out the clock on keeping global temperatures from rising above 1.5C,” says co-author Allison Fajans-Turner, Policy Lead at Rainforest Action Network.
In total, banks have financed fossil fuels to the tune of $7.9 trillion (€6.9tn) since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016.
Last year, they lent or underwrote $429 billion (€371bn) for companies actively expanding fossil fuel extraction.
How do European banks compare on fossil fuel funding?
American banks tend to play a leading role in syndicating the loans and bonds for global fossil fuel companies, the researchers explain. They committed $289 billion (€250bn) in fossil fuel financing in 2024, one-third of the total.
JPMorgan Chase supplied $53.5 billion (€46bn) of that, making it the world’s largest fossil fuel financier. Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Japan’s Mizuho Financial also take a place in the top five worldwide.
In Europe, UK bank Barclays was 2024’s largest fossil fuel financier again, stumping up $35.4 billion (€30.6bn). Barclays also joins JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup among the top four banks with the largest absolute increase in fossil fuel financing last year.
Spain’s Santander, France’s BNP Paribas, Germany’s Deutsche Bank, and the UK’s HSBC each contributed between $14 and $17.3 billion (around €12 and €15bn) to the industry.
“This year, banks have shown their true colours – many have walked away from climate commitments and doubled down on financing fossil fuel expansion, even as global temperatures break records,” says co-author Lucie Pinson, Director and Founder at Reclaim Finance.
“A few European banks may have inched forward, but for most, the lure of dirty money has proven too strong.”
France’s La Banque Postale stands out as having the strongest fossil fuel exclusion policy of any European bank. It financed no oil, gas, or coal producers in 2024 – though it still provided $36.9 million (€32mn) in financing to three companies with fossil fuel business activities in refining, fossil power generation, or fossil fuel logistics, the report found.
“Every cruel dollar that still goes to fossil fuels is a death sentence to our climate-vulnerable peoples,” says Gerry Arances, co-author and Executive Director at Center for Energy, Ecology & Development (CEED), describing the impact of recent heatwaves across Southeast Asia.
Why are banks backsliding on climate commitments?
2021 was a high point for ‘climate action’ from banks. At the UN climate summit in Glasgow, COP26, hundreds of financial institutions joined the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ) to reach net zero by 2050.
It followed the formation of the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) earlier that year, a smaller group of banks which also had the 2050 goal in sight.
But the terms were voluntary, and geopolitical turbulence in the years since has seen banks lose their focus.
Six of the biggest banks in North America pulled out of the NZBA late last year following US President Trump’s election.
“Only rapid and robust binding government regulation and oversight can make banks change course,” says Fajans-Turner. “Without binding regulation, banking on climate chaos will remain banks’ dominant investment strategy, tanking our economy and our planet.”
