Australia’s big four banks have funnelled $43bn into fossil fuels despite their climate pledges
Commonwealth Bank and NAB have slashed their fossil-fuel project funding, while ANZ and Westpac have continued to pour billions of dollars into major polluters, a damning report claims.
Australia’s big four banks have funnelled $43.3bn into 96 major fossil fuel businesses over the past decade, despite each endorsing the Paris Climate Agreement, a new report has found.
The analysis, carried out by climate lobby group Market Forces, finds a clear divergence between the big four; Commonwealth Bank and NAB have been praised for ditching some of the worst polluters, while ANZ and Westpac are accused of “little more than window dressing and greenwashing”.
Market Forces head of research Kyle Robertson, the report’s author, singled out ANZ as the biggest funder of fossil fuels among the big four, having loaned or arranged almost $16bn in finance for companies such as BP, Santos, Glencore and others in the past 10 years.
“ANZ has consistently been the top financier of fossil fuels. It has consistently been a climate laggard that has refused to really make meaningful progress on its commitment (to the Paris Agreement to achieve net zero emissions by 2050),” Mr Robertson said.
Since 2022, ANZ has loaned or arranged more than $5.7bn and Westpac $3.bn, accounting for 71 per cent of the big four’s financing to coal, oil and gas in this period, Mr Robertson claimed.
The research shows that ANZ and Westpac have all financed major companies that were expanding fossil development of fuel in recent years – including Woodside, Santos, JERA, APA Group, GE Vernova, Siemens Energy, BHP, Glencore and BP – funding significant deals in recent months.
Meanwhile, CBA, which used to be one of Australia’s largest funders of fossil-fuel expansion, has gone the other way, and the bank’s lending exposure to companies producing and exploring for oil and gas has plummeted by 75 per cent in the past three years.
Mr Robertson said that between 2016 and 2020 CBA and ANZ “stood head and shoulders” above the rest in financing carbon-intensive industries and fossil-fuel expansion projects, while Westpac was only a small lender.
“But in recent times that’s really flipped,” Mr Robertson said. “Since 2022, Commonwealth Bank has really stood out as a leader amongst the big four when it comes to (cutting) climate change and fossil-fuel finance, while Westpac has actually been regressing to be more or less in line with ANZ in recent years.”
Mr Robertson said that in 2022 Westpac had committed to only providing finance to oil and gas companies with a credible transition plan.
“But just a few months ago, before this policy was to come into effect, Westpac completely reneged on that commitment and watered down its requirements to essentially accommodate companies that don’t have Paris-aligned transition plans,” he said.
From October 1 this year, ANZ, NAB and Westpac have said they would require certain fossil fuel companies to have climate transition plans in place, following the lead of Commonwealth Bank which instituted that same policy in 2024.
However, Mr Robertson claims that ANZ, NAB and Westpac were “yet to demonstrate that their climate transition plan requirements will have any impact on their financing of companies responsible for fossil fuel expansion”.
Market Forces has compiled a list of 23 customers of the big four banks whose business models, it claims, are “currently incompatible with the climate goals of the Paris Agreement and must be ineligible for any new or renewed finance”.
These include firms such as BP, Beach Energy, BHP, Glencore and Siemens Energy.
Mr Robertson said Commonwealth Bank’s divestment from carbon intensive companies was partly driven by a desire to protect other parts of its business under possible threat from climate change.
“There is such a substantial threat to its mortgage portfolio in high-warming scenarios, we think that this (divesting) just makes good business sense for the big four banks … It seems like the rational thing to do,” he said.
Even though $43.4bn represented about 1.1 per cent of the big four’s $3.9tn of assets, it sent a sign to the market that “business as usual is okay despite what these companies’ plans are”, Mr Robertson said.
An ANZ spokesman said that it was one of the largest lenders to the energy sector, “which is the most carbon intensive part of the global economy”.
“We are committed to supporting our customers in this sector to improve their transition plans, including by providing finance to do so,” the spokesman said.
“We have a target to fund and facilitate at least $100bn by the end of 2030 in social and environmental outcomes through customer activities and direct investments by ANZ.”
Westpac’s chief sustainability officer Fiona Wild said the bank was “Australia’s largest lender to greenfield renewable energy projects”.
“At September 2025, 89 per cent of our lending to electricity generation was to renewable generation sources including wind, solar and hydro. Our total sustainable financing increased in FY25 by 37 per cent to $39bn,” she added.
Ms Wild said that the bank had recently exited the financing of thermal coal and had extended their climate transition plan requirements to metallurgical coal and coal power generation.
“Additionally, new or renewed financing for high-emitting sectors is conditional upon customers having Paris-aligned targets,” she said.
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