Paris, France | AFP | Muser NewsDesk
The world’s leading banks ramped up investment in fossil fuels last year to the overall tune of $900 billion, up eight percent on 2024, a group of NGOs said Tuesday in a joint report.
Since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which seeks to limit global warming to 1.5 °C compared with pre-industrial levels, banks have accorded around $9 trillion in loans, share and bond issues to oil, gas and coal companies, says the latest edition of the “Banking on Climate Chaos” report.
The report details how the 65 banks investigated shelled out $906 billion last year in financial support, with around three-fifths of the sample increasing funding.
Only 26 reduced their spending on fossil fuel-related investments during the year.
US giant JPMorgan headed the list, with its provision for fossil fuel investment totalling $58.2 billion, a year-on-year rise of 12.5 percent, found the report.
That was ahead of Bank of America and Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ, said the study, compiled by a consortium of eight NGOs, among them Rainforest Action Network, Reclaim Finance and Urgewald.
The report is based on data published directly by the companies themselves or sourced from specialist providers as well as financial news agency Bloomberg.
In Europe, the report shows the contribution of French banking groups to fossil fuel finance, estimated at around $16 billion in 2025, has actually been declining for several years.
The trend was led by BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, Societe Generale and BPCE.
Reclaim Finance noted “encouraging signs among French banks, with the exception of Societe Generale”.
According to the study, Soc Gen has increased support for oil and gas production and is “the leading supporter of TotalEnergies”.
The bank’s CEO, Slawomir Krupa, was elected to the French oil major’s board of directors last month.
Societe Generale said it “regrets that the data highlighted… does not reflect the ongoing reduction in its support for oil and gas exploration and production”.
Last year marked the end of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), a UN programme for carbon neutrality within the banking sector, in the face of a less favourable climate policy environment in Europe and the United States.
The report suggested that “if these banks had allocated nearly $9 trillion in financing towards a just energy transition over the past decade, the world would today be demonstrably healthier, fairer, and cleaner.”
It added: “The banking sector has a choice: continue amplifying the fragility, inequality, and climate destruction of the fossil era, or align capital flows with the reality that renewable energy is now cheaper, faster, more secure, and irreversible.”
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© Agence France-Presse
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