Oil Change International publishes upwards of 20 reports and briefings every year focused on supporting the movement for a just phase-out of fossil fuels.
This report, Banking on Climate Chaos 2022, analyzes fossil fuel financing and policies from the world’s 60 largest commercial and investment banks. We reveal that fossil fuel financing from the world’s 60 largest banks has reached nearly USD $4.6 trillion in the six years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, with $742 billion in 2021 alone.
With oil prices rising to near-record levels due to Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, companies producing oil and gas in the United States are in line to make tens of billions in additional profits. Under conservative estimates, we find the U.S. upstream oil and gas industry will collect a windfall of $37 to $126 billion in 2022 alone.
New analysis finds that revenues from oil and gas projects backed by European and U.S. companies have fueled Vladimir Putin’s regime to the tune of nearly USD 100 billion since 2014.
Between 2016, following the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement, and June 2021, public and private financial institutions poured at least $132 billion in lending and underwriting into 964 gas, oil and coal projects in West, East, Central and Southern Africa. The vast majority of this finance came from financial institutions based outside Africa, both commercial banks and public institutions such as development banks and Export Credit Agencies.
Asia is one of the few remaining growth markets for gas. The fossil fuel industry and its proponents are pushing to develop $379 billion of gas terminals, pipelines and power plants in Asia over the next decade. Roughly three-quarters of all Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) import terminals in development globally are planned for Asia. This aggressive buildout ignores a simple truth.
The new report finds that wealthy nations — the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, and Australia — planning to approve and subsidize new fossil fuel projects which undermines their recent claims of leadership in addressing the climate crisis.
Our new report “Past Last Call: G20 public finance institutions are still bankrolling fossil fuels” looks at G20 country and MDB public finance for fossil fuels from 2018-2020 for the first time and finds they are still backing at least USD 63 billion per year in oil, gas, and coal projects.
Stopping these fossil fuel projects would prevent a drastic increase in GHG pollution at a time when it is imperative to decrease emissions to meet domestic and international climate goals, including the Paris Agreement that President Biden rejoined.
This impending buildout of new gas infrastructure poses one of the greatest threats to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. Instead of forming a bridge — as gas proponents claim — gas expansion builds a wall against the clean energy future we need.
One day before world leaders meet to discuss the energy transition at the United Nations High Level Dialogue on Energy, more than 200 civil society organizations (CSOs) from over 40 countries have released a statement calling on world leaders to end international public finance for coal, oil and gas.
