SUBSECTOR FINANCING

JPMorgan Chase was also the top banker over the past three years of three spotlight oil and gas subsectors: Arctic oil and gas, ultra-deepwater oil and gas, and LNG. Our research shows an uptick in overall bank financing for Arctic oil and gas last year, which is worrisome considering the Trump regime’s attempts to open up the Arctic Refuge for drilling, as described on page 38. JPMorgan Chase is the biggest banker of Arctic oil and gas by a long shot, followed by Deutsche Bank and SMBC Group.

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.

BIG BANKS STOKE THE FLAMES OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS

A “collective scream sieved through the stern, strained language of bureaucratese,” was the New Yorker’s apt description of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) special report on the impacts of heating the globe by 1.5° Celsius. The “nightmarish tale” that emerges from the 2018 report involves a double whammy: the impacts of 1.5°C will be much worse than previously predicted, and to have a reasonable chance of staying under 1.5°C we need to start immediately an unprecedented global effort to reshape our economic priorities so that we can rapidly bend down the emissions curve.

BANKS MUST RAPIDLY TRANSITION FROM DIRTY TO CLEAN ENERGY

This report does not assess bank financing of clean energy. While we recognize the huge importance of ramping up finance for clean technologies and appreciate that many banks have set targets for funding these sectors, the climate crisis demands not just that banks seize the many opportunities for profit in the clean energy revolution, but also that they be prepared to fundamentally redraw their business models away from financing dirty energy. These banks’ clean financing is in any case swamped by the volumes they funnel into fossil fuels.