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Banking on Climate Chaos Report Shows 'Tremendous' Financing Surge
"The time for climate justice is now, and that means ending fossil fuel investment at its source and holding banks and financial institutions accountable," said one Native American environmental activist.
Jun 17, 2025
The 16th annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, which was released Tuesday, found that dozens of the world's biggest banks committed $869 billion to firms engaged in fossil fuels in 2024—a "tremendous" increase from the overall fossil fuel financing that was recorded the year prior, according to the authors of the study.
The report comes a few months after the World Meteorological Organization announced a new milestone in the climate crisis: Not only was 2024 the warmest year in a 175-year observational period, reaching a global surface temperature of roughly 1.55°C above the preindustrial average for the first time, but each of the past 10 years was also individually the 10 warmest on record.
The new report analyzed the globe's 65 largest banks by assets according to S&P Global's annual rankings and was authored by several climate-focused groups, including Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Sierra Club, Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), and others.
The report has been endorsed by hundreds of organizations in dozens of countries, according to a statement from RAN, and all banks in the report were given the opportunity to review the financing attributed to them prior to the report's release.
Big picture, the report shows that Wall Street investment banks and other financial institutions are "complicit in the climate crisis," according to Tom BK Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network and study co-author.
"The time for climate justice is now, and that means ending fossil fuel investment at its source and holding banks and financial institutions accountable," Goldtooth added.
The bank financing compiled in the report includes things such as the role banks play in facilitating bond issuances or their lending of money, according to the methodology section. Banks play a crucial role in enabling fossil fuel production because, as senior research strategist at RAN Caleb Schwarz explained, fossil fuel companies are quite rich but they don't have enough capital to finance their projects solely on their own.
Fossil fuel financing had been in on the decline between 2021 and 2023, dropping by $215 billion during that time period to $707 billion—meaning the rise in 2024 is a turnaround of over $162 billion.
"This growth in fossil fuel finance is troubling because new fossil fuel infrastructure locks in more decades of fossil fuel dependence," according to the report. "While various macroeconomic and political factors likely influenced specific decisions, at the end of the day, what matters is the outcome: Banks poured even more money into the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, despite the clear societal need for them to do the opposite."
Other topline findings include that the 65 banks featured in the report have committed $7.9 trillion in fossil fuel financing since 2016, and over two-thirds of the banks upped their fossil fuel financing between 2023 and 2024.
The world's biggest offender when it comes to fossil fuel financing in 2024 was JPMorgan Chase, which tallied $53.5 billion in fossil fuel financing, per the report. Bank of America came in second place.
"This should be a wake-up call to national governments and regional supervisory bodies that they need to step in," said Allison Fajans-Turner, bank engagement and policy lead at RAN and one of the co-authors of the report, on Tuesday. "Banks are not policing themselves. Regulators need to set rules to manage the financial risk that banks are putting into the system."
The authors of the report lay out several demands for banks, including that they drop all finance for fossil fuel expansion, adopt "binding and mandatory emissions reduction targets for upstream, midstream, and downstream fossil fuels," and increase financing for a "just transition," among others.
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Morgan Stanley Latest Wall Street Giant to Ditch Net-Zero Coalition
Earlier this week, Bank of America and Citigroup also said they were leaving the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.
Jan 02, 2025
On Thursday, the Wall Street titan Morgan Stanley became the latest financial institution to leave the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a United Nations-convened group of banks committed to "aligning their lending, investment, and capital markets activities with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050."
The defections keep piling up. Earlier this week, Bank of America and Citigroup said they were leaving the alliance, and earlier in December Goldman Sachs Group and Wells Fargo announced they were doing the same.
“We will continue to report on our progress as we work towards our 2030 interim financed-emissions targets,” Morgan Stanley told Bloomberg in an email.
While Morgan Stanley didn't offer an explanation for the exit, according to Reuters, financial firms have repeatedly found themselves in the crosshairs of some members of the GOP who argue that corporate efforts to limit fossil fuels run afoul of antitrust law.
Last summer, the Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee published a report accusing financial institutions colluding to impose "radical environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals on American companies." Their probe was largely focused on another climate group, Climate Action 100+, which is made up of financial institutions who strive to engage companies they invest in on climate issues. That coalition has also experienced a number of defections.
In December, 11 GOP-led states sued three asset managers in federal court, arguing that the firms had "artificially constrained the supply of coal, significantly diminished competition in the markets for coal, increased energy prices for American consumers, and produced cartel-level profits" for the firms in violation of antitrust law.
Despite the stated goals of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, Morgan Stanley and other firms who are a part of the alliance have remained a major financial life lines for fossil fuel companies.
According to a report published by a group of NGOs in 2023, 56 of the largest banks in the Net-Zero Banking Alliance—including Morgan Stanley—have provided nearly $270 billion in the form of loans and underwriting to more than 100 "major fossil fuel expanders," from Saudi Aramco to ExxonMobil to Shell.
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Wall Street Banks Accused of Trying to Sabotage Key Consumer Protection Rule
"The CFPB must stop this ploy by the biggest banks to keep us trapped under their thumbs."
Nov 15, 2024
Consumer advocates applauded last month as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule aimed at making it easier for people to switch financial institutions if they're unhappy with a bank's service, without the bank retaining their personal data—but on Thursday, more than a dozen groups warned the CFPB that major Wall Street firms are trying to stop Americans from benefiting from the rule.
Several advocacy groups, led by the Demand Progress Education Fund, wrote to CFPB director Rohit Chopra warning that major banks—including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citi, TD Bank, and Wells Fargo—sit on the board of the Financial Data Exchange (FDX), which has applied to the bureau for standard-setting body (SSB) status, which would give it authority over what is commonly known as the "open banking rule."
Standard-setting authority for the banks would present a major conflict of interest, said the groups.
The banks are also on the board of the Bank Policy Institute, which promptly filed what the consumer advocates called a "frivolous lawsuit" to block the open banking rule when it was introduced last month, claiming it will keep banks from protecting customer data.
At a panel discussion this week, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan also said the open banking rule, by requiring financial firms to unlock a consumer's financial data and transfer it to another provider for free, would cause "chaos" and amplify concerns over fraud.
"The American people are fed up with Wall Street controlling every aspect of their lives and the open banking rule is an opportunity to give all of us some financial freedom."
The groups wrote on Thursday that big banks want to continue to "maintain their dominance by making it unduly difficult for consumers to switch institutions."
"The presence of these organizations on both the FDX and BPI boards undermines the credibility of FDX and presents various concerns relating to conflict of interest, interlocking directorate, and antitrust law," they wrote.
Upon introducing the finalized rule last month, Chopra said the action would "give people more power to get better rates and service on bank accounts, credit cards, and more" and help those who are "stuck in financial products with lousy rates and service."
The coalition of consumer advocacy groups—including Public Citizen, the American Economic Liberties Project, and Americans for Financial Reform—urged Chopra to reject FDX's application for standard-setting authority so long as the banks remain on its board.
“It would be a flagrant conflict of interest for the same banks who are suing to block the open banking rule because it threatens their market dominance to also be in charge of implementing it," said Demand Progress Education Fund corporate power director Emily Peterson-Cassin. "The American people are fed up with Wall Street controlling every aspect of their lives and the open banking rule is an opportunity to give all of us some financial freedom. The CFPB must stop this ploy by the biggest banks to keep us trapped under their thumbs."
The groups called the open banking rule "a historic step forward for the cause of giving consumers true freedom intheir financial lives."
"For this reason, it is imperative that SSB status not be granted to an organization whose board members are, either directly or through a trade association they are participating in, suing the CFPB to stop the rules from taking effect, particularly when such members may be ethically conflicted from such dual participation," said the groups. "By rejecting SSB status for FDX or any other organization with similar conflicts of interest pertaining to Section 1033, the CFPB will help prevent big banks from sabotaging open banking rules."
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