When banks manipulate numbers: a response to BPCE

The 2025 Banking on Climate Chaos (BOCC) report, co-published by 8 NGOs including Reclaim Finance (1) and endorsed by more than 480 organizations, has raised criticism from banks exposed for their increasing support for fossil fuels. Banque Populaire Caisse d’Epargne (BPCE) is one of the banks to have spoken out. By publicly criticizing the report’s data findings and methodology rather than questioning its own commitments and practices, the French banking group once again shows its unwillingness to support the global fight against fossil fuel expansion and climate change.

In its public response (2), BPCE presents three main arguments aimed at discrediting the report:

1. BPCE highlights its renewable energy financing as evidence of its commitment to the energy transition.
2. Contrary to what BOCC states, BPCE claims to be reducing its fossil fuel financing.
3. It argues that combining lending and underwriting into a single figure is misleading.

Let us have a look at them.

The French group chose to emphasize its financing of renewable energies to downplay the fossil fuel figures highlighted in the BOCC. However, financing renewables does not offset increased support for fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency (IEA) is clear: renewables must replace, not add up to, fossil fuels. By backing fossil fuel expansion in 2024, BPCE undermines its own climate commitments, including its membership in the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA).

A closer look at BPCE’s so-called renewable energy financing target also reveals misalignment with climate science. This anticipated 15% increase in financing by 2026 is insufficient: fully aligning with a 1.5°C pathway requires allocating six dollars to sustainable energy for every dollar directed toward fossil fuels by 2030 – an objective that BPCE is not on track to meet. Moreover, the scope of activities BPCE defines as renewable is vague and misleadingly includes unsustainable technologies and sources, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and biomass.

In response to the BOCC numbers, BPCE draws attention to the recent reduction of their fossil fuel exposure (3), but only looks at the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, the scope of activities it reports on is too narrow: for hydrocarbons, oil and gas extraction and petroleum refining are the only segments considered. However, it is critical to also consider gas liquefaction and regasification, transportation by pipeline and gas power generation, to grasp the full extent of its impact on climate. As Reclaim Finance previously noted, BPCE has supported companies like Venture Global LNG, the world’s largest LNG export developer, in its IPO (4), and underwrote a bond issuance for one of its subsidiaries in April 2025 (5). In 2024, BPCE also took part in three capital raises for Energy Transfer totaling US$7.7 billion (6).

While fossil assets are often a limited share of bank balance sheets, even small amounts of money – especially when lent to the biggest drivers of fossil fuel expansion – can have outsized climate impacts. BPCE’s fossil financing indicator, exposure, also omits bond underwriting, a powerful tool for supporting the sector.

Even though bonds and shares are two distinct financial services, they serve the same functions: providing a company with cash. Nearly half of the $869 billion granted by the world’s 65 largest banks to fossil fuels in 2024 consisted of bond and share underwriting (7). Still, BPCE’s figures ignore the amount of money recently borrowed on the bond market by oil and gas developers with the bank’s helping hand: for example, $5 billion for Saudi Aramco in June 2025, and $1 billion for Eni in May (8). The French bank simply objects with fossil bonds being reported, period.

The importance of bonds is also recognized by BPCE’s peers. BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole, through their 2024 announcements on conventional bonds, implicitly underlined how crucial this type of financial service is for oil and gas expansion. Even if BPCE’s bonds and loans were reported on separately, the outcome would remain the same: BPCE has been ramping up its support to oil and gas developers (9), in contradiction with its climate pledges.

BPCE argues that the “assimilation of bonds and bank financing” is invalid, stating they are “of a totally different nature”. Yet, in its own 2024 sustainability report, BPCE aggregated both on- and off-balance sheet financing, including bond underwriting, to claim over €16 billion allocated to renewable energy (10). This shows the hypocrisy of BPCE’s point on opposing loans and bonds being mixed together for fossil fuel financing. It also makes these 16 billion uncomparable to the bank’s own reporting of fossil fuel financing, which focuses on exposure.

This inconsistency is not isolated. BPCE also ignores the French Banking Federation’s (FBF) numbers aggregating bonds and loans to show how French banks rank among international fossil fuel financiers (11). Finally, BPCE itself acknowledges the significance of these financial services by including bond underwriting in the scope of its policies, and by applying the same commitments to underwriting and lending.

Instead of looking away from its own responsibility in aggravating climate chaos, BPCE should start by disclosing its financing to the fossil fuel sector more accurately and transparently. Most of all, we, authors of the BOCC report, call on BPCE to finally make firmer commitments to end its support for fossil expansion. This starts with cutting all types of financial services to all new upstream oil and gas as well as LNG export terminal projects and to the companies developing them.