What climate crisis? Most of the world’s largest banks increase fossil-fuel financing by billions

The world’s largest banks increased their fossil fuel funding by around $162bn (£120bn) from 2023 to 2024. The 65 top banks in the ‘Banking on Climate Chaos’ report have delivered $7.9tn (£5.8tn) in financing for fossil fuels since the Paris agreement in 2016. They are going back on their own environmental pledges in doing so. And the levels today are worryingly similar to back before the Paris agreement.

The crisis is already here

The trillions come despite the climate crisis supercharging environmental disasters across the planet. In Brazil, parts of the state of Rio Grande do Sul experienced 500-700 millimetres of rainfall in 10 days in May 2024. That’s almost half the average annual rainfall in little over a week. Over 100 people were killed.

And in April 2024, the UAE faced its heaviest rainfall since records began in Dubai. This was an entire year’s worth of rainfall in just 12 hours. It caused severe damage.

The climate crisis also disrupts rainfall patterns and leads to droughts. This was the case for four consecutive seasons in Kenya, its worst drought in 40 years. Then, in early May 2024, floods suddenly hit, killing at least 228 people and displacing around 212,630.

Nonsense carbon capture

The report points out that “policymakers and regulators” are ignoring the climate-destroying profiteering. Indeed, in the UK, instead of delivering a publicly-owned Green New Deal, Keir Starmer is opting for a £21.7bn corporate subsidy for ‘carbon capture’, almost three times the amount of public investment issued for the government’s renewable-energy-promoting vehicle for private finance, GB Energy.

One study showed that a fossil-fuel plant implementing either carbon capture and use (CCU) or synthetic direct air carbon capture and use (SDACCU) only reduced each plant’s net emissions by between 10 and 11%.

Cash over climate

The report shows the total fossil-fuel funding from top banks stood at $869bn (£646bn) in 2024, the highest since 2021. JP Morgan Chase was the top banking financier for climate-destroying industry with an increase of around $15bn in investments in 2024. Citigroup, Bank of America, and Barclays followed closely behind with their own increases.

US, Canadian and Japanese banks are at the top of the fossil-fuel charts, with Chinese and European banks also challenging for a spot. And with the election of Donald Trump to another term in the US, things may get worse. The USA’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a rollback of pollution rules in March. Trump himself has called the climate crisis a “hoax”.

JP Morgan Chase and other US banks have themselves found that temperatures will likely increase to beyond 2C of warming since the industrial revolution (which will likely mean more catastrophe). But instead of being concerned with stopping the crisis, they are examining how to continue their profits.

Short of a publicly-owned Green New Deal, banks could dramatically scale up the financing of renewable energy companies and cut off funding for fossil fuels. Unfortunately, as the report shows, they are currently doing the opposite.

Featured image via the Canary