World’s largest banks pledged $906bn to fossil fuel companies in ‘unfathomable’ increase in 2025, report finds

Climate activists, including Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, protest against Chase’s support of Total Energies' EACOP pipeline at JPMorgan Chase headquarters in Manhattan on 29 May 2026. Photograph: Gina M Randazzo/Zuma Press Wire/ShutterstockView image in fullscreenClimate activists, including Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, protest against Chase’s support of Total Energies' EACOP pipeline at JPMorgan Chase headquarters in Manhattan on 29 May 2026. Photograph: Gina M Randazzo/Zuma Press Wire/ShutterstockFossil fuelsWorld’s largest banks pledged $906bn to fossil fuel companies in ‘unfathomable’ increase in 2025, report findsJPMorgan Chase leads 65 banks making decisions incompatible with restraining rising temperatures, researchers say

The world’s largest banks committed $906bn in financing to the fossil fuel industry last year, an “unfathomable” increase in investment locking in years more of coal, oil and gas production as the world continues to overheat, a new report has found.

The surge in new fossil fuel lending, up $64bn or nearly 8% on 2024, shows that the world’s largest 65 banks are making decisions incompatible with international agreements to restrain rising global temperatures, according to the coalition of environmental groups behind the new analysis.

JPMorgan Chase is again the world’s leading financier of fossil fuels, according to the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, after pushing $58bn to the sector last year – up 13% from 2024.

Bank of America committed the second largest amount to fossil fuels last year, followed by Japanese banks MUFG and Mizuho Financial. Citigroup, another US bank, rounds out the top five, with Barclays, at number eight, the highest placed British bank.

View image in fullscreenThe Bank of America Tower in New York on 11 October 2025. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images“Last year was the first year where we were hoping to see a continuous decrease in historical numbers, but we actually saw that increase and then that continues this year,” said Caleb Schwartz, a policy analyst at Rainforest Action Network, one of the groups behind the report. “So it’s a troubling trend.”

Asked for comment about its fossil fuel lending, a JPMorgan Chase spokesperson said: “As one of the world’s largest financiers of energy, we support the full range of energy solutions and technologies, with a focus on reliability, affordability, security and long-term resilience. We believe our data reflects our activities more comprehensively and accurately than estimates by third parties.”

In 2015, countries agreed in the Paris climate deal to strive to avert a breaching of 1.5C in global heating above preindustrial times, beyond which the world will suffer ever more ruinous heatwaves, floods, droughts and other climate-fueled disasters.

View image in fullscreenThe Enbridge terminal and pipelines next to the Suncor energy refinery on 23 August 2023 in Alberta, Canada. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty ImagesAvoiding such a threshold would require the near elimination of planet-heating emissions from fossil fuel production. Since the Paris agreement, however, the world’s largest banks have funnelled $8.7tn to the fossil fuel industry to dig and drill for more coal, oil and gas.

Scientists now predict that the 1.5C limit will be breached imminently, with a recent string of record hot years set to be further surpassed this decade.

In the wake of the US and Israel’s attack on Iran, which has escalated the global cost of oil and gas, several of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies have reported surging profits this year.

“The fossil fuel incumbents are not going out with a whimper,” said Niko Lusiani, a climate and energy expert who edited this year’s report. “They are doubling down to expand an increasingly fragile, unreliable, risky energy system.”