fossil fuel drilling undermine climate pledges

“We will not back down until our natural balance is restored and anyone helping fund the extractive destruction of our communities will be held accountable.”Īlison Kirsch, research and policy manager at RAN, said: “Any further expansion of fossil fuels risks locking humanity into generations of climate catastrophe. Yet the top fossil clients of the world’s largest banks are still being showered with tens of billions of dollars even as they actively expand drilling, mining, fracking, and other fossil fuel development unabated.” “These banks are funding climate chaos by financing fossil fuel extraction to the tune of $742bn in 2021 alone,” said Mea Johnson, divestment campaign coordinator at the Indigenous Environmental Network. Of the 44 shown to have net zero by 2050 goals, the report said that 27 did not have a “meaningful no-expansion policy for any part of the fossil fuel industry”. While a number of the 60 banks considered have similar climate targets, the RAN report said that these were often worded vaguely and gave scope for the companies to act against them. However, following these financial institutions’ signing of the alliance, each was found to have financed fossil fuel expansion projects for majors such as Saudi Aramco and ExxonMobil. Notably, these four largest lenders are also members of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which has a commitment of aligning with net-zero emissions by 2050 using “robust, science-based guidelines”. Of the banks reviewed, the four largest lenders to fossil fuel projects were JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, and Bank of America, accounting for a quarter of all fossil fuel financing over the past six years. Alongside RAN, contributing groups include BankTrack, the Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, Reclaim Finance, Sierra Club, and Urgewald.Īccording to the report’s findings, since the Paris Agreement in 2015, the world’s 60 largest private banks have sunk $4.6tn into fossil fuel financing. The report, conducted by a coalition of environmental groups, led by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), is said to be the most comprehensive analysis to date of banking’s backing of fossil fuels. To do this, the researchers identified 25 indicators of progress, ranging from simply acknowledging that burning fossil fuels causes climate change to scaling back oil and gas exploration. The four largest lenders to fossil fuel projects were JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, and Bank of AmericaĪ new report has found that the world’s banks channelled $742bn into fossil fuel expansion projects in 2021, despite various climate commitments announced by global lenders. The second component of the research involved analysing pledges and actions relating to clean energy and decarbonisation made by each company.

Fossil fuel drilling undermine climate pledges