FOSSIL FUEL FINANCE REPORT CARD 2019

In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a sobering report on the devastating impacts our world will face with 1.5° Celsius of warming — let alone 2°C — while setting out the emissions trajectory the nations of the world need to take if we are to have any shot at keeping to that 1.5°C limit. This 10th edition of the annual fossil fuel finance report card, greatly expanded in scope, reveals the paths banks have taken in the past three years since the Paris Agreement was adopted, and finds that overall bank financing continues to be aligned with climate disaster.

For the first time, this report adds up lending and underwriting from 33 global banks to the fossil fuel industry as a whole. The findings are stark: these Canadian, Chinese, European, Japanese, and U.S. banks have financed fossil fuels with $1.9 trillion since the Paris Agreement was adopted (2016–2018), with financing on the rise each year. This report finds that fossil fuel financing is dominated by the big U.S. banks, with JPMorgan Chase as the world’s top funder of fossil fuels by a wide margin. In other regions, the top bankers of fossil fuels are Royal Bank of Canada in Canada, Barclays in Europe, MUFG in Japan, and Bank of China in China.

This report also puts increased scrutiny on the banks’ support for 100 top companies that are expanding fossil fuels, given that there is no room for new fossil fuels in the world’s carbon budget.And yet banks supported these companies with $600 billion inthe last three years. JPMorgan Chase is again on top, by an even wider margin, and North American banks emerge as the biggest bankers of expansion as well.

This report also grades banks’ overall future-facing policies regarding fossil fuels, assessing them on restrictions on financing for fossil fuel expansion and commitments to phase out fossil fuel financing on a 1.5°C-aligned trajectory. While some banks have taken important steps, overall major global banks have simply failed to set trajectories adequate for dealing with the climate crisis.

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