Big banks ramp up fossil-fuel financing, climate groups find

Big banks have ramped up their financing of the fossil-fuel industry, according to research by a coalition of environmental advocacy groups. But some of the banks criticized the report, stating that clean energy is still a priority for them.

The world's 65 largest banks committed $869 billion to fossil-fuel companies in 2024 — $162 billion more than in 2023, according to "Banking on Climate Chaos," a new report by a coalition of eight environmental advocacy groups.

And this increase wasn't just due to a few outliers. Of the 65 banks in the study, 45 ramped up their financing of oil, gas and coal last year. The report's authors were sharply critical of those banks.

"This is an opportunistic pursuit of short-term profit that's standing not only in opposition to global climate goals, but to global financial sector commitments, and even banks' own net-zero commitments," said Jessye Waxman, a senior advisor at the Sierra Club who contributed to the report, during a press briefing.

The new numbers mark a sharp turnaround from just a few years ago. In 2021, 43 banks from around the world joined the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a United Nations-backed association of lenders that pledged to wind down their backing of the energy sources that drive climate change. Over the next two years, fossil-fuel financing steadily declined.

Then came 2024. Amid a political backlash to the ESG movement and a presidential election ultimately won by Donald Trump, who has dismissed climate change as a hoax, banks' investments in carbon-based fuels shot back up. By January 2025, America's six biggest banks — JPMorgan Chase , Bank of America , Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo , Citigroup and Morgan Stanley — had dropped out of the Alliance.

Four of those banks now top the list of fossil-fuel funders. No. 1 in the advocacy groups' ranking is JPMorgan, which according to the report provided $53.5 billion in financing last year — $15 billion more than in 2023. (The report defines "financing" as the combination of lending, bond issuances and share issuances.)

In second place is Bank of America, which invested $46 billion in 2024, up $12.7 billion from the previous year.

Next are Citigroup with $44.7 billion, the Japanese bank Mizuho Financial with $40.3 billion, and Wells Fargo with $39.3 billion. All three of those banks devoted billions more to fossil fuels in 2024 than they had in 2023, the report found.

Some of the banks pushed back against the report's conclusions. JPMorgan questioned the researchers' statistics, though it did not provide specific numbers to counter them. In a 2024 report, the New York-based megabank said that it provided 1.29 times as much financing for renewable energy sources as it did for non-renewable ones in 2023.

"As one of the world's largest financiers to both traditional and clean energy companies, we help power today's global economy," a JPMorgan spokesperson said in an email. "We believe our data reflects our activities more comprehensively and accurately than estimates by third parties."

Citigroup, meanwhile, said it continues to support "the transition to a low-carbon economy" but also supports high-carbon energy sources for the time being.

"Our approach reflects the need to transition while also continuing to meet global needs for energy security, particularly in this time of increasing electricity demand," a Citi spokesperson said in an email.

Bank of America, Mizuho and Wells Fargo declined to comment. Mizuho had not provided a comment by deadline.

Scientists have warned that to avoid the most catastrophic version of climate change, the long-term warming of the planet must not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius. For a 12-month period in 2023 and 2024, the world blew past that limit. On their current course, global temperatures are likely to rise between two and to three degrees, according to experts.

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In 2023, a number of powerful groups warned about the urgency of the crisis. At the U.N. climate conference COP28 in Dubai, almost 200 countries agreed, for the first time, to begin "transitioning away from fossil fuels." The International Energy Agency urged the oil and gas industry to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 60%.

Meanwhile, 2023 became the hottest year on record — until it was eclipsed by 2024.

In this context, the authors of the Banking on Climate Chaos report puzzled over why banks would choose this moment to jump back into fossil fuels.

"To see the numbers jump so high right after that just means that the financial sector is at odds with the commitments that world governments have made," said Allison Fajans-Turner, bank policy lead at the Rainforest Action Network.

Waxman of the Sierra Club offered a guess at one potential reason: After Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, oil and gas prices rose dramatically. That price spike led to higher profits for fossil-fuel companies, which as a result had less need for loans. But in more recent years, oil and gas prices have been steadily descending.

"There was just less of a need as fossil-fuel companies were raking in significant profits," Waxman said. "So as oil and gas prices have started to come down, we've seen more of a need and an interest from fossil fuel companies to seek external financing."

Another possible reason has been summed up in JPMorgan's annual climate reports.

"We don't 'boycott,'" the bank has written in those reports. "We do not make decisions based on political or social agendas."