A house divided against itself cannot stand, and the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) was a house deeply divided. Torn apart by the conflicting priorities of its members and battered by external political forces, the global banking coalition has collapsed and ceased all operations.
The internal division was between the stated public goal of decarbonization and the private business reality of continued fossil fuel financing. Many NZBA members, including JPMorgan Chase and HSBC, remained among the world’s top funders of the fossil fuel industry, creating a fundamental contradiction that weakened the alliance from within.
The external pressure was the political firestorm that erupted in the US following Donald Trump’s re-election. An “anti-woke” movement put the alliance’s members in an impossible position, forcing them to choose between their public climate persona and their political safety.
This combination of internal weakness and external pressure proved fatal. The six largest US banks, already struggling to reconcile their NZBA membership with their core business, found it easy to jettison the alliance to solve their political problem. Their departure exposed the deep divisions within the house.
With the American pillar removed, the rest of the structure crumbled. International banks, facing their own internal contradictions and seeing the alliance’s weakened state, also withdrew. The house fell, proving that a coalition built on such a divided and shaky foundation was ultimately unsustainable.
