Yemisi Izuora
Global financial institutions are making significant investment decisions towards fossil fuels financing signifying a great shift from previous stand.
The banks raised their combined financing for fossil fuels by more than one-fifth last year, bucking a falling trend since 2021 amid a backlash against net-zero policies, especially in the United States.
The world’s top 65 banks increased fossil fuel funding to $869 billion in 2024, up by $162 billion from 2023, according to the 16th annual Banking on Climate Chaos (BOCC), report released by climate campaign organizations on Tuesday.
Last year, loans were the top form of financing, rising to $467 billion from $422 billion in 2023. Bonds saw the largest increase to $401 billion, up from $284 billion, while acquisition financing also increased—to $82.9 billion from $63.7 billion.
Since the Paris Agreement was signed a decade ago, banks have funded fossil fuels with $7.9 trillion, found the report co-published by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, the Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development, Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, Sierra Club, and Urgewald.
JP Morgan Chase remains the largest fossil fuel financier in the world for yet another year, committing $53.5 billion to fossil fuel companies in 2024. A total of four banks increased their fossil fuel financing by more than $10 billion.
Moreover, the top 4 banks with the largest absolute increase are JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Barclays.
U.S. banks committed a total of $289 billion in fossil fuel financing in 2024, which represents one third of the global financing for the year.
“Even in the face of worsening disasters and increasingly dire warnings of scientists and policy experts, banks actually increased their financing to fossil fuels between 2023 and 2024 and still poured billions into expanded fossil infrastructure,” said Allison Fajans-Turner, Policy Lead at Rainforest Action Network and co-author of the report.
After years of scrutiny and blacklisting from Republican states in the U.S. and lawsuits from Republican attorney generals, North American banks and asset managers began quitting net-zero alliances en masse following President Donald Trump’s election victory.
The top U.S. banks and four of Canada’s largest banks are no longer part of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), a group of leading global banks committed to aligning their lending, investment, and capital markets activities with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.