Dive Brief:
- JPMorgan Chase released its latest sustainability report last week, announcing changes to how it measured capital deployment, updated carbon intensity targets and the establishment of a new center for energy and environmental issues.
- In updating its carbon intensity targets, JPMorgan aligned them with the International Energy Agency’s 2025 net-zero pathway and adjusted its deadline for interim targets from 2030 to 2035, according to the sustainability report released Wednesday.
- JPMorgan has a goal of financing or facilitating more than $2.5 trillion to help advance sustainable development before the end of 2030. That includes a target of financing or facilitating $1 trillion towards green objectives and the company’s American Dream Initiative.
Dive Insight:
JPMorgan Global Head of Sustainability Heather Zichal said in an Oct. 14 blog that the changes to the company’s environmental targets “are rooted” in the lessons the bank has learned since setting them in 2021, including that “finance is often not the binding constraint,” emissions can’t be “considered in a vacuum” and “financed emissions are an imperfect metric.”
Lack of capital is usually not a reason projects don’t move forward, Zichal said. It is more often workforce gaps, low demand, policy uncertainty or permitting, interconnection or supply chain issues that hold up a project.
“The world needs more energy,” Zichal said in the blog. “That energy will help power factories, deploy AI, electrify the economy, and expand energy access. Meeting that demand while balancing affordability, security, reliability, and sustainability, what we call the ‘Four Forces,’ is one of the defining economic opportunities of our era.”
Based on the bank’s learnings, it will focus on “mobilizing capital at scale,” look holistically at the energy system and “lead with data and transparency,” according to Zichal’s blog.
JPMorgan’s updated 2035 carbon intensity targets seek to lower its energy mix carbon intensity 51% from its 2019 baseline; decrease its operational oil and gas portfolio intensity 47% from a baseline; lower its electric power portfolio carbon intensity 79% from its baseline; and also includes targets for its auto manufacturing, aviation, shipping, iron and steel, and cement portfolios. JPMorgan retained a 2030 goal to decrease the carbon intensity of its aluminum portfolio 22% from a revised 2021 baseline; the company’s aluminum portfolio carbon intensity is up 19.5% from that baseline as of the end of 2025, according to the report.
The bank reported reaching 49% of its sustainable development target and 52% of its green financing goal since 2021, reporting $1.2 trillion mobilized to support the sustainable development target and $520 billion toward its green goal. The bank reported facilitating or financing $217 billion towards the $2.5 trillion goal in 2025, including $96 billion mobilized towards its green goal, $92 billion in development finance and $28 billion for community development.
JPMorgan broadened the eligibility criteria for its green financing target to include low-carbon energy financing, accounting for financing for the grid and nuclear energy, along with “low-carbon energy at diversified power companies,” the bank said.
JPMorgan also announced the creation of its Center for Energy and the Environment last week, which will focus on meeting rising energy demands while balancing the “four forces shaping energy and environmental outcomes,” Zichal said. Zichal will lead the new center which includes JPMorgan’s Center for Carbon Transition.
The bank reported that its operational emissions footprint, its scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, declined in 2025. JPMorgan reported its scope 1 emissions decreased 8.8% year-over-year, from 100,024 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent to 91,215 tCO2e. The bank’s location-based scope 2 emissions decreased 7.7%, from 773,852 tCO2e to 713,931 tCO2e.
The bank said its operational activities were “largely driven by activities to power [its] buildings.”
