Wall Street keeps backing fossil fuel expansion through plastics

banks financing – New analyses find major banks dramatically increased financing tied to fossil fuel expansion and petrochemical growth—undermining climate commitments and pointing toward a long-term strategy that shifts demand from oil and gas to plastics, fertilizers, and che

On a bright, unromantic day outside JP Morgan Chase headquarters in New York—February 25, 2020—protesters held signs demanding banks stop fueling the crisis.

Nearly six years later, the argument has new ammunition. Evidence compiled by environmental groups says the biggest banks in the United States and beyond did not just walk away from climate pledges—they continued to finance fossil fuel growth and helped bankroll the industry’s pivot toward petrochemicals: the plastics. fertilizers. and chemical products designed to keep fossil fuels profitable even as oil and gas demand faces pressure.

For the past two years. more than a dozen major banks have been not only reneging on their climate commitments. but also actively making the crisis worse. according to the reporting. In 2024 and 2025—during the leadup to President Donald Trump’s second inauguration—each of the nation’s six largest banks abandoned the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. a voluntary climate coalition. The Alliance then shut down completely in October.

Since that collapse. other institutions—including Royal Bank of Canada. Scotiabank. HSBC. NatWest. Santander. and JPMorgan Chase—have either weakened or scrapped their decarbonization targets. The message from the latest findings is stark: the promises may have faded, but lending appetite appears to have surged.

New reports released earlier this month describe what banks have been financing. One analysis. from the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and other environmental groups. found that the world’s top 65 banks contributed $508 billion to companies expanding fossil fuel development in 2025. That figure represents a 27 percent increase since 2024. and it is described as the highest level in any year since at least 2016. based on the organization’s past analyses.

RAN’s focus is on fossil fuel expansion, but it points toward a bigger strategy. Beyond financing oil and gas extraction, the banks are also bankrolling the industry’s shift into plastics, fertilizers, and other petrochemical products.

“Petrochemicals are a deliberate and pivotal strategy to ensure that we continue using fossil fuels,” one quote carried in the reporting comes from a plastics campaigner.

The second report comes from the nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). It found that. between January 2019 and June 2025. big banks gave the world’s top 15 petrochemical companies at least $591 billion in loans and underwriting. Some of that money benefited integrated oil and gas corporations. and the amount CIEL could directly attribute to petrochemical activities was $252 billion.

As a reference point, the reporting notes that New Zealand’s GDP is about $279 billion—an attempt to convey scale through a familiar economic comparison.

Taken together, the reports suggest large financial institutions are enabling a long-term viability strategy for the fossil fuel industry: declining demand for oil and gas in energy systems and transportation is met with a boom in petrochemicals.

That is not a theoretical idea. In recent years, oil majors including ExxonMobil, Shell, and Saudi Aramco have invested heavily in petrochemicals by acquiring majority stakes in plastics and chemical companies and retrofitting oil refineries to accommodate a shift in production.

Those moves align with projections cited in the reporting from the International Energy Agency: plastics. agrichemicals. and other petrochemical products are expected to account for more than one-third of the growth in oil demand through 2030 and nearly half of it by 2050—far more than other sectors like aviation and shipping.

CIEL’s plastics campaigner, Ximena Banegas, put it bluntly. “Petrochemicals are not just a general growth area for fossil fuel companies,” Banegas said. “They are a deliberate and pivotal strategy to ensure that we continue using fossil fuels.”

Banks, in her view, are not merely observing the energy transition—they are steering away from it. “Banks are unfortunately continuing to put profits over responsible societal action.”

RAN’s analysis includes specific names. Bank of America. Citigroup. JPMorgan Chase. and the Japanese bank Mizuho Financial were among the top banks increasing financing for fossil fuel expansion last year. the report found. RAN said all 65 banks it analyzed boosted funding across the board for new oil and gas exploration, transportation, and refining.

The largest growth, according to the analysis, was for transportation—specifically including new pipelines and capital-intensive LNG export terminals. Those projects can create a decades-long commitment to using methane gas, the reporting says.

“It’s overall disappointing,” Allison Fajans-Turner, a senior energy finance campaigner for RAN, said. She pointed to a shift in where fossil fuel money is concentrated: fossil fuel financing is becoming more concentrated among a smaller number of large banks. primarily those based in North America and Japan. as several European banks have begun to scale back funding.

RAN’s report didn’t look directly at financing for the production of petrochemicals. But it described how some findings indicate growing interest in that part of the industry. A significant increase in loans and underwriting for coal expansion. for example. is linked—at least partially—to a spike in the number of coal-to-chemical plants planned globally. mostly in China and India. Environmental advocates say those investments risk giving coal “a new lease of life.”.

CIEL’s report similarly identifies major banks as key funders of petrochemical activity. Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Mizuho Financial are also among the top funders, the reporting states.

The top 15 recipients of this funding include a mix of oil and gas, agriculture, plastics, and chemical companies such as ExxonMobil, Syngenta, LyondellBasell, and Dow.

Although CIEL didn’t compare each year between 2019 and 2025. the report did identify a significant jump in petrochemical finance in 2024. the last full year examined. Banegas pointed to industry estimates as supporting evidence of ongoing expansion. including a report estimating that 127 new polyethylene projects will come online between 2025 and 2030.

CIEL’s report also argues that petrochemicals are not only expanding—they are compounding the harm. As of 2020, petrochemicals’ annual greenhouse gas emissions amounted to 1.9 billion metric tons, described as more than twice that of aviation and shipping.

“If we’re serious about sustainable materials, then we need to put our money where we want to go,” Banegas said.

Fredric Bauer, a senior lecturer at Lund University in Sweden, has conducted related research on petrochemical financing between 2010 and 2020. He said continued interest in big plastics and chemicals projects is not surprising, even if it can look counterintuitive. Industry analysts have warned that the petrochemical industry is in “structural decline. ” he said. pointing to canceled or delayed projects. downgrading from multiple credit rating agencies. and recent plastics and agrichemicals price shocks due to the war with Iran.

But companies keep investing. Bauer said they often “do not respond to conventional market signals.” Instead of treating oversupply as a reason to stop building, he said the priority is “to ensure long-term markets for oil and gas.”

That mindset helps explain why a broader fossil fuel financing spree can coexist with the idea of “transition.”

A coalition of advocacy groups. including CIEL. is now calling on big banks to end support for fossil fuel and petrochemical expansion. They want policies against financing companies building facilities to produce virgin plastics and fossil fuel-derived fertilizers. They also want banks to require clients to adopt credible transition plans to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees C. which may include targets to reduce plastics use and phase out some pesticides.

Fajans-Turner said the upward swing in fossil fuel financing shows the weakness of voluntary sustainability commitments and underscores the need for regulation. She suggested governments should mandate more robust decarbonization plans from financial institutions and require improved incorporation of climate risks when determining a borrower’s creditworthiness.

“That would actually have many downstream consequences about who gets funding and who does not,” Fajans-Turner said.

Joel Tickner. a professor of public health at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and founder of an independent research initiative on sustainable chemicals. argued for a different lever: scaling back loans and tax incentives supporting the fossil fuel industry. Tickner said those subsidies amount to more than $1 trillion annually. He said some of that money could help finance the development and commercialization of greener chemistry.

Fossil fuel companies, Tickner said, “have received decades of subsidies and financial support.” If society wants sustainable materials, he argued, it has to change where money goes.

“If we’re serious about sustainable materials, then we need to put our money where we want to go.”

United States politics Wall Street banks fossil fuels petrochemicals Net-Zero Banking Alliance Rainforest Action Network Center for International Environmental Law climate commitments LNG export terminals pipelines plastics fertilizers sustainable finance ExxonMobil Citigroup JPMorgan Chase Bank of America