Five Takeaways From Global Banks’ Green vs. Fossil Financing
JPMorgan embodies the banking sector’s enduring support for oil—and its recent shift to slightly favoring climate-friendly projects.
Green bond sales and loans this year are outpacing new fossil finance activity for the first time since the the Paris Agreement was set at the very end of 2015.
Photographer: Daniel Acker/BloombergSince the clinching of the Paris Agreement, the global banking sector has underwritten more than $3.6 trillion of bonds and loans for the fossil-fuel industry. No bank has done more—or taken more in fees—than JPMorgan Chase in the past five-plus years.
The same constellation of banks has originated more than $1.3 trillion of green bonds and loans to support climate-friendly projects over the same period. No bank has done less than Wells Fargo, which has arranged the lowest proportion of green financing relative to fossil fuel among the world’s largest lenders.