Environmental activists pressured major banks to divest funding from the controversial Minnesota pipeline they call a "ticking climate bomb," and to refrain from further investments in fossil fuels at a march in 2021.Alejandro Alvarez/Sipa/AP
For the first time since 2021—the start of the Biden administration—banks have ramped up their financing of fossil fuel projects, a changing tide that reflects the Trump White House’s close ties to and energetic support for Big Oil. That’s based on the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, which analyzes the lending patterns of the 65 largest banks in the world, and some 2,730 firms with fossil fuel interests that they’ve lent to.
The report, published today and authored by a group of eight environmental non-profits, found that banks financed oil fields, pipelines, and coal mines to the tune of $869 billion in 2024—up by $162 billion, or almost 25 percent, from 2023. Over the past eight years, the 65 banks profiled in the report financed almost $8 trillion in fossil fuel expansion.
Meanwhile, in 2024, the world passed the much-feared 1.5 degrees Celsius warming target set by the 2015 Paris Accords, which Trump again withdrew the US from almost immediately after returning to office. Experts attribute the increase in many natural disasters to climate change; in the US alone, 27 separate natural disasters in 2024 individually surpassed $1 billion in damages, with a cumulative 568 fatalities and $182.7 billion in costs.
But banks abandoned net-zero and climate-friendly pledges in droves last year, in addition to backing fossil fuels. “This year, banks have shown their true colors,” said Lucie Pinson, one of the co-authors of the report.
With President Trump’s pro-fossil fuel executive orders, even more commercial lenders ditched climate agreements in the first half of 2025. Sierra Club’s Jessye Waxman described the retreat as a “clear capitulation to political pressure.”
Overwhelmingly, the report found, both the banks financing fossil fuels and the companies they financed were US-based. Four of the five top banks investing in fossil fuels were also US-based.
Liquid natural gas is the fastest-growing fossil fuel in the world, and the US is its largest exporter. When calculating the 20-year emissions footprint of both LNG and coal, researchers have found that LNG has a 33 percent larger footprint than coal.
Climate impacts aside, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis says that there’s no need for more LNG projects—and that the “glut” of projects will likely lead to higher gas prices for consumers in the long run, in addition to community impacts zeroed in on by the Banking on Climate Chaos report.
In Mozambique, for example, four active LNG projects have forced hundreds of families to relocate, with a Mozambican NGO receiving more than 1,000 complaints about compensation, resettlement, and housing from families forced to relocate. TotalEnergies, one of the project’s owners, helped fund a paramilitary to “ensure the security of Mozambique LNG project activities,” which investigations have found abused and killed residents. Fifteen separate banks finance the four projects, including a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase.
A 2024 report from the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice catalogued parallel harms to US communities near natural gas projects, finding that predominantly low-income communities of color near such developments had higher rates of pollution, emissions, asthma, and cancer.
“Facilities [are] being sited in our most vulnerable communities and placing our most vulnerable populations at risk—while providing the lion’s share of economic benefits to more affluent populations and communities,” said Dr. Robert D. Bullard, the center’s head.
“I dream of a time when we don’t have to produce this report any more,” said Diogo Silva, one of its co-authors and a campaigner with the nonprofit BankTrack, “as we would finally be protecting present and future generations from catastrophic living conditions.”
