According to a new analysis released Tuesday, some of the top banks in the world financed fossil fuels more than twice as much as they did sustainable alternatives between 2021 and 2024.
According to a report conducted by Reclaim Finance and collaborators Rainforest Action Network, Urgewald, and WWF, “the biggest 65 banks are not on track when it comes to financing the energy transition.”
Top global banks such as HSBC, JP Morgan and Santander had between 2021 and 2024 allocated only $1,368 billion “for sustainable power such as solar, wind, and related infrastructure … while $3,285 billion was allocated to fossil fuels,” it said.
“This.. means for each dollar allocated to fossil fuels, just 42 cents went to sustainable alternatives,” it said.
According to the survey, US and Canadian banks finance fossil fuels four times more frequently than they do sustainable alternatives. Better but still “well below” the standards required for the energy transition were the institutions in Asia and Europe.
This year, according to the report, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stated that “the (energy) transition is not yet fast enough or fair enough.”
“Our analysis shows that indeed, 93 percent of financing allocated to sustainable alternatives is concentrated in companies and projects in (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries and China, despite the urgent need for financing in the rest of the world,” the study concluded.
