Wall Street’s faltering on climate action opens up opportunity for European banks 

Lucie Pinson is the founder and executive director of Paris-based NGO Reclaim Finance. The abrupt exit of the six biggest US banks from the UN’s Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) is a disturbing sign of the shallowness of these institutions’ professed commitment to acting on climate. It is also a sign of their willingness to preemptively show subservience to the incoming Trump administration.
The question now is whether other banks will follow the example of their US counterparts – especially given the rise of right-wing politicians in Europe and Canada who seek to halt action on climate – or if the remaining banks in the NZBA will now push for more ambition from the alliance, and strengthen their own climate commitments.
Some European bank officials have privately complained in the past that they would like the NZBA guidelines to be stronger but that US members were blocking progress. The European and other banks in the NZBA can now show that they were not just hiding behind the US banks’ obstructionist skirts, and act to increase the NZBA’s ambition.
The recent exodus of the Wall Street banks is hardly a surprise. At least some of them reportedly threatened to leave the NZBA two years ago when red-state officials threatened them with antitrust lawsuits. The banks stayed in then because the NZBA and the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), an associated alliance for all types of financial institutions, both clarified that none of their recommendations were compulsory.
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The suspension of activities by another net-zero alliance representing big money managers is one more sign of financial firms’ fear of retribution from the Trump administration and emboldened right-wing politicians at the state level.
The Net Zero Asset Manager (NZAM) initiative’s requirements of its members were so weak as to be to mainly symbolic – and it shows how much fossil fuel companies are concerned about their continued access to capital that the politicians they fund will attack even the most milquetoast climate initiative from the finance sector.
Action with or without voluntary body
Regardless of their NZBA membership, the big US banks have never exhibited any real interest in restricting fossil fuel finance. JPMorgan Chase provided US$41 billion in finance for oil and gas and coal companies in 2023, billions more than any other bank. Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo were all in the top five global bankers of fossil fuels between 2016 and 2023.
In contrast, some of the largest European banks have shown that another path is possible.
While still falling short of the action required by science to stop fuelling climate change, particularly on LNG (liquefied natural gas), French giants BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole have both committed to end the facilitation of bond issuances for oil and gas companies. Société Générale has a target to cut its credit exposure to