The world's leading banks ramped up investment in fossil fuels last year to the overall tune of US$900 billion, up 8 percent on 2024, a group of NGOs said Tuesday in a joint report.Since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which seeks to limit global warming to 1.5C compared with pre-industrial levels, banks have accorded around $9 trillion in loans, share and bond issues to oil, gas and coal companies, says the latest edition of the "Banking on Climate Chaos" report.
The report details how the 65 banks investigated shelled out $906 billion last year in financial support, with around three-fifths of the sample increasing funding.
Only 26 reduced their spending on fossil fuel-related investments during the year.
US giant JPMorgan headed the list, with its provision for fossil fuel investment totaling $58.2 billion, a year-on-year rise of 12.5 percent, found the report.
That was ahead of Bank of America and Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ, said the study, compiled by a consortium of eight NGOs, among them Rainforest Action Network, Reclaim Finance and Urgewald.
