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2022 Fossil Fuel Finance Report

Banking on Climate Chaos – Any bank supporting any company that is expanding fossil fuels is driving climate chaos: “Fossil fuel financing from the world’s 60 largest banks has reached USD $4.6 trillion in the six years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, with $742 billion in fossil fuel financing in 2021 alone. This report examines commercial and investment bank financing for the fossil fuel industry — aggregating their leading roles in lending and underwriting debt and equity issuances — and finds that even in a year where net-zero commitments were all the rage, the financial sector continued its business-as-usual driving of climate chaos. Fossil fuel financing plateaued last year, amid a lagging recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic — yet at levels still higher than in 2016, the first year after the Paris Agreement was adopted. These findings underscore the need for banks to immediately implement policies that end their financing for fossil fuel expansion and begin to zero out their support altogether. Overall fossil fuel financing remains dominated by four U.S. banks — JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America — who together account for one quarter of all fossil fuel financing identified over the last six years. RBC is Canada’s worst banker of fossil fuels, with Barclays as the worst in Europe and MUFG as the worst in Japan..”

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