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It turns out that climate change is extraordinarily profitable. 

That’s according to a report, “Banking on Climate Chaos,” recently published by an international coalition of climate and environmental advocacy organizations. The coalition’s findings detail how banks support fossil-fuel infrastructure, which then deliver financial returns for banks, a system propped up by state governments.  

This legal and economic set up has enabled the fossil-fuel sector to be one of the “most lucrative industries of all time,” according to the report. It’s a system both propped up by lucrative government subsidies and motivated by geopolitical events. The report notes that bank and insurance company shareholders made over $50 billion following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or a full 11% of oil and gas windfalls. The two founders of the U.S.-based Venture Global, which invests in midstream operations and was the single largest recipient of bank fossil-fuel financing in 2025, were $16 billion richer after the recent closure of the Strait of Hormuz due to the Trump administration’s war with Iran.

It’s a tale many are familiar with by this point: Fossil-fuel dependence is a system that makes the rich richer and pushes the lowest earning people further into financial precarity, spending more on fuel or to recover after a climate disaster. As climate shocks worsen around the world, fossil-fuel infrastructure has proven itself less equipped to withstand storms, extreme heat, and freezes. 

To learn more, Prism’s senior climate reporter, ray levy uyeda, spoke with Léa Miomandre, a financial analyst at Reclaim Finance, one of the organizations that authored “Banking on Climate Chaos.” This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ray levy uyeda: How did this report come together?

Léa Miomandre: We started by finding every single fossil-fuel company on earth. It’s really helpful to map all of the biggest actors throughout the entire fossil-fuel supply chain, and we especially look at fossil-fuel companies that currently have assets and are building more oil and gas fields, pipelines, liquified natural gas import and export terminals. Then we work really hard to get all of the transactions that they got in the previous years, and then we filter to only publish results about the top 65 banks. In the world there are around 2,000 banks, but the top 65 banks worldwide are committing 75% of the funding to fossil-fuel companies. The 12 banks that finance the most fossil-fuel companies, and especially fossil-fuel expansion, account for 40% of fossil-fuel funding worldwide. 

levy uyeda: Can you lay out how banks benefit from fossil-fuel infrastructure buildout, how fossil-fuel corporations benefit from banking investment, and where government fits into this?

Miomandre: It’s very important for banks to have existing relationships with companies with that much liquidity and that much profitability. When a bank gives out a loan or helps a particular company access markets via bond issuance, they are handsomely paid for that. Fossil-fuel companies benefit from their relationship to banks in a number of ways: Those companies are able to massively scale their operations, to have a lot of liquidity, or to have lots of buffer in terms of uncertainty when they are able to access money from banks. It can help them develop new oil and gas fields or provide them liquidity to then give out money to their shareholders. 

Since the Paris agreements in the period between 2015 and 2022, we saw the beginning of a good trajectory in terms of a decrease in fossil-fuel funding, which was great news. It was absolutely not on par with what was needed, but it was definitely going in a good direction. A lot of banks decided to join coalitions like the Net Zero Banking Alliance and set their own emissions reduction targets. Since 2023, we have seen a stark change in this trajectory. We have seen a lot of incentives from the U.S. government to push toward a rise of fossil fuel again, and all of those alliances just crumbled. The time where we could be able to believe that banks are able to change on their own and to leave a very profitable business segment is just over. Let’s be realistic: They need to be compelled to do it in order for it to happen. 

levy uyeda: As you mentioned, we’re seeing more of an investment in fossil fuels from banks, as well as more deregulation at the U.S. federal level, even as climate change worsens. What would you attribute this trend to?

Miomandre: Climate change has already wreaked havoc and killed millions of people, but the people making those decisions [about regulations] are not affected by the impacts of the ongoing climate change, so they’re much more inclined to prioritize short-term profitability.

We call this the “twin crises” in the report. Because of the ongoing war in Ukraine and the war in Iran, energy prices have gone through the roof. Banks are inclined to finance those companies. Especially in the U.S., it’s both the country where the banks are the worst offenders in terms of fossil-fuel funding by a gigantic margin, and it’s also where domestic companies, like Venture Global, are the biggest recipients of fossil-fuel funding.

Ten American banks are in the top 65, and they represent over a third of all fossil-fuel funding. 

It’s also a good opportunity for targeted advocacy. France has had several banks in the top 65, but in the past few years, two of the biggest French banks have actually massively decreased their funding for fossil-fuel companies. That is partly the result of relentless and targeted advocacy campaigns against them. If they can divest from that business model, then it’s not an impossibility for JP Morgan, Citibank, or Bank of America as well.

levy uyeda: I’m interested in how the fossil-fuel industry has been able to tell a story about itself that is false—that coal, oil, and gas are stable sources of energy and that fossil-fuel burning does not result in climate warming emissions. This narrative is falling apart around the world, but the industry still has its grip on the governments that regulate it. How can we break apart that narrative?

Miomandre: The story has nuances. First, we heard that fossil fuels were not harmful, then we heard that fossil fuels were inevitable and that it was impossible to live without them, or that Western environmentalists didn’t want the rest of the world to be able to develop. That narrative has started to fall apart because we’ve also learned, over the past 15 years, that those fossil-fuel companies knew since the 1970s that there was a direct correlation between the burning of fossil fuels and the warming of the atmosphere. We started hearing new stories, like that methane was a transition energy source. Now we know that methane gas traps more heat over a shorter period of time than carbon dioxide. This story is multifaceted, and you can see how fossil-fuel companies adapt to the overwhelming scientific evidence against them. 

It’s also interesting to look at the stories of banks financing those companies. Banks say that we need to finance the energy safety of our countries, we need to match consumer demands, or that without fossil fuels we will face a recession. They say there’s an economic imperative, but it has never been cheaper to have wind and solar power. Renewable energy is now way more reliable and cheaper than fossil-fuel alternatives, and we know that those banks are just underfinancing this sector. Reclaim Finance has done research on this, too. For every dollar that banks spend on fossil fuels, they spend 42 cents on renewables. 

levy uyeda: A large section of the report outlines how war is good for the oil business. Given that international governing bodies are the only entities that can hold individual governments to account—especially when those wars violate international treaty, human rights declarations, and law—what is your recommendation for judicial bodies like the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice?

Miomandre: The role of the courts remains to be seen, unfortunately. I do hope the courts are able to look at scientific facts, use the data that we provide, and offer judgments that go in the right direction. I hope that if they do so, their legitimacy will hold. Using the courts can be a powerful tool. In 2023, a coalition of environmental organizations sued BNP Paribas for their financing of upstream extraction operations. In 2025, a similar lawsuit was filed in the Netherlands against the country’s biggest bank, ING. That followed a similar lawsuit filed in 2019. 

Knowledge is power, so giving out this information as an open source document is already quite powerful. I hope grassroots activists take that and build movements to bring reputational risk in full force, both against banks and against governments to force them to act. We have to use all of the tools at our disposal.

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Tina Vasquez, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor