Analysis Details How Wall Street Underwriting Quietly Funnels Billions Into Fossil Fuels

“Underwriting is a huge missing piece of net-zero transition plans, allowing big U.S. banks to continue to help fossil fuel companies raise billions of dollars with limited scrutiny,” said one campaigner.

A report out Monday sheds light on how big U.S. banks’ underwriting of bonds and equities for polluting corporations constitutes a “hidden pipeline” for fossil fuel financing.

It’s no secret that financial institutions play a leading role in driving the climate emergency. Since 2016, the year the Paris agreement took effect, the world’s 60 largest private banks have provided more than $5.5 trillion in financing to the fossil fuel industry, flouting their pledges to put themselves and their clients on a path to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions as the window to avert the worst consequences of the intensifying climate crisis rapidly closes.

But banks’ underwriting activities receive far less attention than their direct lending practices, even though both are instrumental in enabling fossil fuel expansion and must be reformed to rein in the industry most responsible for imperiling the planet’s livability.

That’s the key takeaway from a new analysis of Wall Street’s participation in capital markets published by the Sierra Club’s Fossil-Free Finance campaign.