ING’s 2025 Climate “Update”: still fueling fossil expansion

ING has released its Climate Update 2025 (1). Far from being the expected breakthrough it could have been due to ING’s latest efforts to position itself as a climate leader amongst global banks, the update simply repeats existing commitments and glosses over the bank’s ongoing support for fossil fuel expansion. The bank uses its validation by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to reiterate its pole position as a credible climate actor. But failing to exclude companies expanding their fossil fuel business from its client portfolio in fact stands in direct contradiction with the latest update of the SBTi standards – an update ING conveniently left out of its own climate update.

ING continues to provide loans and financial support to large oil and gas companies that operate in different parts of the industry, which represent over 70% of fossil expansion plans globally (2). Despite large-scale criticism from NGOs and civil society organizations at ING’s  Annual General Meeting (AGM) this year, including from frontline communities affected by the devastating consequences of the LNG build–out that ING is financing, the bank still allows corporate financing for the companies developing LNG infrastructure.

At this stage, ING is only excluding financing infrastructure projects that specifically support new oil & gas field development (i.e. transport, storage, export terminals) from 2026 onwards. But it is far from being enough, in fact, ING is a central financier of Venture Global, the world’s largest developer of LNG export terminals. Over the past three years, ING has been the largest lender, and in 2024 it still placed third.

Its client engagement strategy explicitly avoids red lines. Even when a client has no transition plan to shift business activities away from fossil fuels towards activities aligned with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C, or an insufficient one, ING pledges continued financial support rather than withdrawal. Such practices stand in stark contrast to the scientific consensus. Banks must cease all financing for companies expanding fossil fuel production and infrastructure. It must not allow fossil developers to play for more time that we do not have. Consequently it’s hard to see the value of an update on its climate activities when ING in fact hasn’t changed any of its policies.

In its update, ING highlights that its 2030 targets were validated under the SBTi Financial Institutions’ Near-Term Criteria effective for five years. However, ING fails to mention the most recent development: in July 2025, SBTi released its Net-Zero Standard for Financial Institutions, which explicitly rules out financing for companies developing new coal, oil, or gas projects — including LNG infrastructure. The SBTi update requires this exclusion from 2030 onward — a straightforward step ING could have embraced immediately if its ambition is to become the world’s leading bank on climate. Yet it chose not to.

By omitting this critical point, ING uses the validation received for its targets from the SBTi prior to the latter’s update, while continuing to finance fossil expansion — an oversight that undermines both its credibility and climate ambition.

Amid widespread backtracking on climate commitments across the financial sector, ING could have seized the moment to lead. Instead, it missed an opportunity to align its practices with climate science and its own stated ambition to be a climate leader.

CEO Steven van Rijswijk stated: “There are those that say we’re not doing enough on climate and those that say we’re doing too much. However, it’s not about making bold statements.”

He is right that this is not about bold statements — it is about bold action. Yet those actions are glaringly absent from ING’s Climate Update. And he is wrong in framing the issue as a question of doing ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’. The real question is whether ING is doing the right thing. By now, the answer should be unequivocal: banks that claim climate leadership must end financial support for companies driving fossil fuel expansion, including new oil and gas fields and the infrastructure that enables them.

ING’s 2025 Climate Update was an opportunity to demonstrate real leadership in a year when financial institutions are under pressure to halt their support for fossil fuel expansion. Instead, ING chose to recycle old commitments, obscure critical developments in the SBTi framework, and continue financing some of the biggest drivers of the climate crisis. 

By doing so, ING undermines both its credibility and its stated ambition to align with the 1.5°C goal. If ING truly intends to be a climate leader, it must go beyond words and incremental policies. That means ending all financial support — project and corporate — for companies expanding oil, gas, and LNG, and drawing clear red lines in its client engagement.