Extinction Rebellion protest in London, Credits: Joe M. O'Brien, Shutterstock
Which companies & banks were considered for this research?
Company Scope
The research for Still Banking on Coal covers all companies and their subsidiaries from Urgewald's Global Coal Exit List (GCEL). For each financing year, we used the respective GCEL to define the company universe, i.e., coal financing in 2024 was researched using the GCEL 2024, financing in 2023 using the GCEL 2023, and financing in 2022 was researched based on the GCEL 2022.
Companies on GCEL represent 90% of global thermal coal production and global coal-fired power capacity. GCEL offers statistics on over 1500 parent companies and their subsidiaries operating along the thermal coal value chain (coal exploration, processing, trading, transport & logistics, equipment manufacturing, mining, power production, etc.). It does not cover coal used for cement or steel production.
In scope of the financial analysis are only deals for subsidiaries and parent companies of the firms that are listed on GCEL. Data is aggregated on parent level.
Financial Institutions Scope
The scope of research includes all commercial banks and financial institutions that have provided lending and underwriting services to coal companies. We exclude export credit agencies and (multilateral) development banks from the dataset. Financing is aggregated on group level.
What financial data was researched?
Our research covers loans and underwriting services provided to coal companies.
One way to obtain debt is by borrowing money through loans. In most cases, money is borrowed from commercial banks. Loans can be either short-term or long-term in nature.
Short-term loans have a maturity of less than a year. They are mostly used as working capital for day-to-day operations. Short-term debt is often provided by a single commercial bank, which does not ask for substantial guarantees from the company.
A long-term loan has a maturity of at least one year, but generally of three to ten years. Long-term corporate loans are particularly useful for financing expansion plans, which typically only generate returns after a certain period of time. The proceeds of corporate loans can be used for all activities of the company. Long-term loans are often extended by a loan syndicate, which is a group of banks brought together by one or more arranging banks. The loan syndicate will only enter into the loan agreement if the company can provide certain guarantees that interest and repayments on the loan will be fulfilled.
One specific form of corporate loan is project finance. This is a loan that is earmarked for a specific project. This type of financing is increasingly rare for coal projects. Instead, most loans to coal companies tend to be for general corporate purposes or for working capital
Underwriting services provided by banks help companies bring shares or bonds to capital markets. In our dataset, 95% of underwriting services are related to the issuance of bonds, while 5% of are related to share issuances.
Share issuances
Issuing shares on the stock exchange gives a company the opportunity to increase its equity by attracting a large number of new shareholders or increase the equity from its existing shareholders. When a company offers its shares on the stock exchange for first time, this is called an Initial Public Offering (IPO). When a company’s shares are already traded on the stock exchange, this is called a secondary offering of additional shares.
To arrange an IPO or a secondary offering, a company needs the assistance of investment banks. These banks initially purchase the shares and then promote them to potential shareholders. Once all underwritten shares have been sold, they are removed from the investment banks’ balance sheets. However, the assistance provided by financial institutions to companies in share issuances is crucial. They provide the company with access to capital markets and guarantee that shares will be bought at a pre-determined minimum price.
Bond issuances
Issuing bonds can best be described as cutting a large loan into small pieces and selling each piece separately. To issue bonds, a company relies on banks to underwrite the offering. In investment banking, underwriting essentially means buying the bonds with the intention of reselling them to investors. Still, in case the bank fails to sell all bonds it has underwritten, it will end up owning the bonds.
A note on green bonds and loans
Financing labeled as a pure “green” loan and bond issuance in the financial databases used for the research was not taken into account in the analysis. This is based on the conservative assumption that these green bonds and loans usually do not finance coal operations. However, we cannot be sure: Green labels are not streamlined across financial markets. Green is not a registered trademark, but a label used different by different labeling bodies. Sustainability-linked financing might be included in the data if it is not officially flagged as “green” in financial databases.
How was data processed?
Financial Institutions’ financing contributions
Our research covers loans and underwriting services that are provided by a syndicate, i.e., a group of banks. Where data providers report banks’ contributions to a deal, we attribute credit to each bank based on its known contribution to the deal. If the percentage of fees earned by each bank is reported instead, that percentage is imputed to represent the level of their participation. Otherwise, the value of the deal is divided among all known participants, with a greater share allocated to the banks in leading roles (bookrunners). These calculations are based on a differentiated method developed by the research institute Profundo. We exclude roles that do not involve financial contributions.
Adjusters
Adjusters are usually on company-level and based on the company’s coal share of revenue as recorded in the GCEL relevant to the respective financing year, e.g. a loan of $100 million in 2023 to a company with a coal share of revenue of 40% in 2023 would be recorded as a $40 million loan in the data.
We applied adjusters to the financial data in order to reflect how much of a company's business model is coal-related – and thus how much of a bank's financing of a company goes into coal. Adjusters are usually on company-level and based on the company’s coal share of revenue as recorded in the GCEL relevant to the respective financing year, e.g., a loan of $100 million in 2023 to a company with a coal share of revenue of 40% in 2023 would be recorded as a $40 million loan in the data.
Where no revenue information was available, we applied the coal share of power production (for utilities), the parent company's coal share of revenue, or a hand-checked estimate as adjusters. . Some historic GCEL data was edited for consistency.
Limitations
Metallurgical coal companies and companies that operate but not develop new captive coal power plants are not in scope of this research.
Our research does not include bilateral financing, i.e., a company borrows money from only one bank.
We do not display financing from Multilateral Development Banks and from Export Credit Agencies.
Sources
Our financial research builds on the “BOCC+ 2025” dataset researched by the Banking on Climate Chaos Coalition (including Rainforest Action Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, BankTrack, CEED, Oil Change International, Reclaim Finance, Sierra Club, and Urgewald). Data for the “BOCC+ 2025” dataset is collected, analyzed and validated using multiple sources including Bloomberg Finance L.P, IJGlobal and publicly available information in company reports and media archives, as well as additional research provided by Profundo.
Industry data is based on Urgewald's Global Coal Exit List 2022, 2023, and 2024. GCEL is researched based on publicly available information. Relevant coal-related data is mainly extracted from the companies' own reporting, such as company websites, annual reports, financial reports, credit rating reports, investor presentations, and stock exchange filings. In some countries, we also draw on government-owned regional or national websites. In China, bidding websites with reliable information about companies, university websites, and recruitment websites are used as additional sources.
GCEL has developed and grown over the years, not least because the inclusion thresholds were lowered over time. Where necessary, we adapted the historic GCEL versions to ensure that the company scope, names, and mapping of companies onto parent entities stay consistent. Please contact us if you have questions on specific companies.
Further Remarks
The regional distribution is based on the “Standard country or area codes for statistical use (M49)” list issued by UN Statistics Division with some minor amendments. The African continent is further broken down based on the regional definition of the African Union.
We rigorously error-check our data before publication. Still: our data can only be as good as the data from the underlying (commercial) databases. Considering the size and complexity of our research, we might not have caught every single error. Should you notice inconsistencies or if something looks off to you, please reach out to us at financeresearch [at] urgewald.org (financeresearch[at]urgewald[dot]org). Thank you!
Fossil Finance Datasets Overview
Our Still Banking on Coal dataset is complemented by other financial research projects, most notably the Banking On Climate Chaos report and Urgewald's research project Investing in Climate Chaos. Key differences between these datasets are highlighted below:
| Still Banking on Coal | Banking on Climate Chaos | Investing in Climate Chaos |
|---|---|---|
Scope of data |
||
| What financial institutions are covered? | ||
| Commercial banks worldwide | Top 65 commercial banks globally | Institutional investors worldwide (incl. pension funds) |
| What companies are covered? | ||
| Coal companies as defined by the Global Coal Exit List 2022, 2023, 2024 | Fossil fuel companies as defined by the Met Coal Exit List 2025, the Global Coal Exit List 2024, the Global Oil & Gas Exit List 2024, as well as further companies involved in fossil fuels identified by Bloomberg Industry Classification Standard, metallurgical coal producers | Fossil fuel companies as defined by the Global Coal Exit List 2023 and the Global Oil & Gas Exit List 2023 |
| Types of financing researched | ||
| Lending and underwriting of share and bond issuances | Lending and underwriting of share and bond issuances | Bondholding and shareholding |
| Time period covered | ||
| 2022-2024 | 2021-2024, plus trends since 2016 | Snapshot of May 2024 |
| Are adjusters used? | ||
| Transactions are adjusted for the share of coal business in the companies' overall business | Transactions are adjusted for the share of fossil fuel business in the companies' overall business | No adjusters are used |
How is data aggregated? |
||
| For financial institutions | ||
| Aggregation of financing by subsidiaries at parent bank level | Aggregation of financing by subsidiaries at parent bank level | Aggregation of investments at investor parent level |
| For companies | ||
| Aggregation of financing at parent company level, subsidiary to parent mapping bsed on GCEL | Aggregation of financing at parent company level, subsidiary to parent mapping based on Bloomberg | Aggregation of investments at parent company level based on GCEL / GOGEL |