JP Morgan Chase at 1° place among global fossil finance banks and fossil fuels
(Sustainabilityenvironment.com) – In 2021, the 60 largest commercial and investment banks in the world financed fossil fuels with $742 billion. Since 2015, when the Paris Agreement was signed, the money disbursed reaches 4 600 billion dollars. The finance of Fossil fuels doesn’t break, on the contrary it accelerates: in the first months of 2022, many investments arrived on the coal at twice the rate of 2021.
The trend made by Environmental ONGs in the Banking on Climate Change report said: the finance of fossil fuels has been stable for 6 years till now, indeed the investment curve points slightly upward. From 723 billion in 2016 to a peak of 830 billion in 2019, and then begin a steep descent below the starting levels: 750 billion dollars invested in oil, gas and coal in 2020, just reduced to 742 billion last year.
Even if 44 of the 60 institutes analyzed have promised climate neutrality by 2050 and in May of the last year the IEA clarified that to achieve this goal, we must immediately turn off the taps towards the fossil fuels. Nearly $146 billion from these banks went to 100 global companies responsible for the biggest oil and gas expansions, including QatarEnergy, Saudi Aramco and ExxonMobil.
Read also Towards global standards to assess companies’ Net-zero commitments
In the report prepared by Oil Change International, Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Indigenous Environmental Network, Reclaim Finance, Sierra Club e Urgewald, the fossil finance ranking sees JP Morgan Chase in first place, followed by Citi and Wells Fargo. The first is the main important for the expansion of offshore oil and gas, included the Artic. Wells Fargo dominates in fracking. Other sectors show alarming trends. Like the one of oil shale, the most polluting fossil source: finance to fossil fuels for tar sands grew by 51% between 2020 and 2021 for a total of more than 23 billion, coming mainly from Canadian banks.