Big banks and investment funds are still financing billions for the extraction of fossil fuels responsible for global warming, in contradiction with their commitments to fight against greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report published on Friday.
According to the analysis carried out by the London-based think tank InfluenceMap using public data from these giants of global finance, the 30 largest firms financed fossil fuel producers to the tune of 740 billion dollars in 2020 and 2021.
American banks JP Morgan, with 81 billion USD, Citigroup, 69 billion USD, and Bank of America, 55 billion USD, are the three main financiers.
There is a clear disconnect between what they say about climate change and what they actually do, said report author Eden Coates.
Of the 30 financial institutions, all but one have indeed made commitments to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. But several are also members of groups lobbying against measures to green finance.
This objective of carbon neutrality in 2050 is essential to have a chance of meeting the most ambitious objective of the Paris agreement on climate change, to contain warming +1.5C compared to the pre-industrial era.
And the International Energy Agency (IEA) published in 2021 a roadmap for an energy transition showing that to meet this objective, all investment in new fossil fuel extraction projects had to be stopped.
Nobanques: the cheapest offers to control your budget
Climate activists regularly denounce greenwashing operations in finance or industry and campaign for shareholders to exert pressure to eliminate activities or investments harmful to the climate.
Any bank that makes a promise of carbon neutrality while actively lobbying against the necessary climate regulation (…) is greenwashing, said Christopher Hohn, a billionaire British fund manager and committed to the climate, in a press release published in response to the InfluenceMap study. Shareholders must vote against bank executives who hide their exposure to climate risk.
InfluenceMap indicated that it had previously submitted its results to the banks studied for their possible comment.