9th Jun 2026 05:33
(Alliance News) - The world's biggest banks together increased their fossil fuel financing by 8% in 2025, an analysis has found.
The top 65 lenders – which include Barclays PLC, HSBC Holdings PLC, NatWest Group PLC and Lloyds Banking Group PLC– committed to investing USD906 billion, the 17th annual banking on climate chaos report said.
Despite 26 of these banks reducing their fossil fuel financing in 2025, it still marked an 8% rise overall from USD869 billion in 2024.
It comes after a coalition of research and campaign groups, including the Rainforest Action Network and Reclaim Finance, analysed the banks' lending and underwriting to around 2,900 companies active across the fossil fuel industry.
They looked at data from sources such as Bloomberg, IJGlobal, Dealogic, Urgewald's Global Oil and Gas Exit List, Global Coal Exit List, Metallurgical Coal Exit List and London Stock Exchange Group.
Since the 2015 UN Paris Agreement – an international deal agreed in 2015 to limit rising temperatures – banks have invested USD8.7 trillion into oil, gas, and coal operations, the researchers found.
This is despite the International Energy Agency saying that no new fossil fuel projects should be developed beyond existing fields if the world is to limit the worst impacts of global warming.
But according to the analysis, the 65 banks together committed USD508 billion dollars to companies to expand fossil fuel developments in 2025, which marked a record 27% increase from the year before.
The increase last year cements the change in direction for global fossil fuel financing seen in 2024, when investment rose for the first time in three years after it seen a steady decline since 2021.
Many lenders have watered down climate goals and pulled out of the sector's top climate group, the Net Zero Banking Alliance, following Donald Trump's re-election as US president two years ago.
JPMorgan Chase & Co remains the world's top fossil fuel financier, committing USD58 billion to fossil fuel companies in 2025, up 13% from 2024, followed by Bank of America Corp and Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc.
The 12 top fossil fuel lenders now provide nearly 40% of all global bank fossil fuel financing across approximately 2,000 banks worldwide, the report said.
For UK banks, Barclays was found to be the country's top financier of fossil fuels last year, committing USD34 billion in 2025, ranking 8th overall globally.
This was followed by HSBC with USD16 billion, which ranked 25th overall globally, then Natwest with USD2.5 billion and Lloyds with USD1.7 billion.
While Barclays decreased its financing last year by 5%, HSBC and Standard Chartered PLC provided significantly more, with an increase of 16% and 28%, respectively in 2025, according to the report.
The report argued that the increase in financing demonstrates the limited impact of the sector's voluntary climate commitments and the need for stronger rules from governments to drive capital flows away from polluting industries.
Of the 15 North American banks in the report, 12 now have no meaningful fossil fuel commitments, it said.
Niko Lusiani, research director at the Rainforest Action Network, who co-wrote the paper, said: "A decade after Paris, just 12 banks now drive more than a third of the world's fossil fuel financing — proof that this is no longer a problem of markets, but of a small set of decision-makers making active choices.
"They are choosing to lock in an energy system that hands record profits to a few fossil firms while passing the costs onto three of every four people on Earth who depend on imported fuel.
"The good news is that what a handful of banks built, governments and people worldwide have the power to change."
Co-author Diogo Silva, campaign lead at BankTrack, said: "Banks keep telling us they're committed to climate.
"Then they abandon their own policies the moment political pressure mounts. Voluntary pledges have had their chance. We need binding rules — not promises."
The Press Association has contacted UK Finance and relevant banks for comment.
source: PA
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