Find the Best Green Banks in Your Area
Why find a green bank? most often, your money is not just sitting idly in your bank account. Instead, it’s being used to create loans for projects that can either harm or benefit the planet, and the negative environmental impact of this can often be far greater than that of other climate actions you might take.
Why Find a Green Bank?
As a climate-conscious consumer or organisation, it's important to understand that where you choose to store your money can have an outsized impact on your carbon footprint. That's because most often, your money is not just sitting idly in your bank account, but it is being used to create loans for projects that can either harm or benefit the planet.
The environmental impact of this can often be far greater than that of other climate actions you might take, so it's critical to prevent this factor from working against your overall efforts to secure a better future for the planet. To help you to align your money with your values, below we are curating a constantly-updated list of financial institutions that are dedicated to offering sustainable banking services. These institutions have all been rated "Great" or "Good" by us (using our updated methodology if you are in the UK). Below the list you can find our FAQ to help guide your choice.
What is the Fossil Free Alliance?
It's hard to believe, but in the years since 197 countries agreed to drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions during the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, big banks have simply continued to pour unabated trillions into fossil fuels. From 2016-2022, for example, the 60 largest commercial banks in the world provided financing for the industry worth over $5,500,000,000,000 USD. This money locks in environmental destruction for decades to come, if not centuries.
Of the financial institutions you can find below, those denoted with the symbol above form part of our Fossil Free Alliance. These institutions have all gone on record with us to state that going forward, they will play no part in the provision of loans, underwriting or investments to aid the expansion of fossil fuel extraction, production or infrastructure – and in the majority of cases, they never have.
Those green institutions who appear below but are not part of the alliance may very well have the same credentials as those that are – it could just be that we have not approached them yet. But we are working on it! They are all nevertheless committed to working on their social and environmental impact.
To understand more about why we consider divestment from fossil fuels to be particularly critical in efforts to mitigate anthropogenic climate change, visit our Fossil Free Certification page. There we describe our reasons for creating this alliance and what we hope to accomplish with it.
If you think your own green financial institution is eligible to join Bank.Green's Fossil Free Alliance, please ask them to contact us at hello@bank.green.