How we took on the world’s biggest fossil fuel financiers in 2024

As unnatural disasters like fires and floods impacted every corner of the world, pensions, retirement funds, and big banks like Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Citi doubled down on climate deception, hiding the truths of fossil fuel financing behind green advertising.

But we’re not fooled. The lengths that pensions and retirement funds went through to greenhush, and that big banks like Citi and RBC went through to greenwash fossil fuel financing, is absurd, and proof that our movement is powerful and a growing threat to the capitalist status quo. And we’re not stopping here. 

More people than ever are connecting financial institutions — meant to serve the people — to instead financing human rights violations, weapons, and fossil fuelled climate chaos.

Here’s some of what we accomplished in 2024:

• We supported the New York City Comptroller’s Office to introduce shareholder resolutions at major North American banks to reveal their ratios of clean-to-dirty energy financing, a key indicator showing how dangerously banks are holding back the inevitable just transition;
• In 2024, more than 60 institutions with assets totalling more than $500 billion made commitments to divest from fossil fuels – taking another half a trillion of investable dollars off the table for climate polluters, bringing the total to 1667 institutions globally, representing more than $40 trillion in assets.
• We supported the amazing folks with Divest Oregon to pass the COAL Act, divesting the $98 billion Oregon Public Employee Retirement Fund (OPERF) from up to $1 billion in thermal coal producers. 
• We got more creative than ever, launching the first-ever Climate Finance Scholarship Contest inviting young people to envision a climate-safe future, and the Unite the Swifties campaign, mobilizing thousands of Taylor Swift fans to call out RBC’s fossil fuel financing, and bringing thousands of new people into the movement;
• We worked with a powerful coalition of New Yorkers, Frontline leaders, and climate groups for an exciting victory: the New York City Comptroller will implement a first-in-the-nation commitment to exclude new investments in private equity-backed fossil fuel projects, setting precedent for funds across the country and around the world to follow suit;
• We worked with partners to put the Bankers on Trial (literally!), forcing Members of Parliament in Canada to summon the CEOs of Canada’s biggest banks, including RBC CEO Dave McKay, to a Parliamentary Committee for financing of the climate crisis;
• We collaborated with Indigenous and frontline partners to hold the first-ever Environmental Racism Hearing – The People vs. Citi – followed by an epic summer of direct action aimed at Citibank executives – Summer of Heat – bringing the heat to Citi’s front door, and culminating in the release of a groundbreaking report: Citi: Funding Fossil-Fueled Environmental Racism in the Gulf South.

Holding pensions, retirement funds, and banks accountable and calling out corporate greenwash is exactly what the Stand.earth community was built for.

Everyday, more and more people are connecting the dots between banks and pensions financing the climate crisis, and seeing these financial institutions get ever more insidious in greenwashing and dodging complicity in causing the fossil fuelled climate crisis.

Looking back at everything we’ve achieved has only made our team more determined than ever for 2025. We’re gearing up for the new year and we’ve got big plans to hold banks accountable and fight for a climate safe future.