Today, Wells Fargo became the first major US bank to announce it will abandon its commitment to achieve net-zero financed emissions by 2050. The bank also rescinded its interim 2030 emissions targets for specific sectors, which included power generation, oil and gas, auto manufacturing, steel, and others. 

The bank cited a lack of conditions necessary to help its clients decarbonize faster, including public policy, consumer behavior, and technology changes. Although not referenced directly in the bank’s statement, sustainable finance has faced significant challenges as the Trump Administration continues broad attacks on corporate climate policies.

The announcement comes soon after all six major US banks, including Wells Fargo, left the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), a voluntary initiative launched in 2021 with hundreds of member banks across dozens of countries. At the time, the Sierra Club stated that what mattered more than membership in voluntary industry alliances is the strength of a company’s climate policies and its implementation of them. Today’s move by Wells Fargo is a much more serious reversal of any climate progress it was making.

In response to the news, Ben Cushing, director of the Sierra Club’s Sustainable Finance campaign, issued the following statement:

“Wells Fargo’s decision to abandon its net-zero targets is an outrageous abdication of responsibility. Instead of using its significant influence to drive the energy transition and address the climate crisis, the bank is hiding behind the excuse that it can only passively follow its clients’ actions. Real-world decarbonization must happen across the economy, but banks play a critical role in shaping market dynamics through their financing and client engagement decisions. As the world’s fifth-largest financier of fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement, Wells Fargo has actively fueled the climate crisis while now attempting to shift the blame onto everyone else. This retreat is both cowardly and shortsighted. At a time when financial institutions should be leading on climate, Wells Fargo is instead putting the economy, its shareholders, and the planet at greater risk.”

BACKGROUND
An October 2024 report by the Sierra Club, Leaders or Laggards: Analyzing major US banks’ net-zero commitments, examined the banks’ climate targets, policies, and disclosures, and the ways in which they are, or are not, aligned with their goals to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

The most recent Banking on Climate Chaos report showed that since the Paris Agreement, from 2016-2023, the world’s 60 largest private banks financed fossil fuels with $6.9 trillion — with US banks JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley accounting for over $1.8 trillion of that total. Wells Fargo was the world’s fifth-largest funder of fossil fuels in that period, providing more than $296 billion in lending and underwriting to the fossil fuel industry.

About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person's right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.

This press release was originally published on Sierra Club's website here.