BP and Shell’s profits in 2024 more than double the amount of UK’s climate finance commitments

Date: 11 February 2025
Campaigns: Climate

BP and Shell’s combined 2024 profits are more than double the amount of the UK’s climate finance commitments, new analysis from NGO Global Justice Now has found. The combined total of Shell and BP’s profits over 2024 amount to £26.2 billion.

In contrast, the UK has committed to spending £11.6 billion on international climate finance between 2021/2022 and 2025/2026.

At COP29 in November, developing countries criticised rich countries including the UK for failing to pledge adequate climate financing, with the agreed pledge of $300 billion a year by 2035 falling far below the $1.3 trillion a year many say is required.

The Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance previously stated that rich countries should contribute around $1.3 trillion by 2035, warning that “The less the world achieves now, the more we will need to invest later”.

Analysis by Oxfam previously found that rich countries are overstating the “true value” of climate finance by up to $88 billion by providing 70% of climate finance in loans, not grants in 2022.

The UK government has also previously been accused of “double counting” climate finance after making several definitional changes to what counts towards the climate finance goal.

Commenting, Izzie McIntosh, climate campaign manager at Global Justice Now said:

When two fossil fuel companies can earn over £26 billion in one year alone, we really have gone through the looking glass. The true hardships in 2024 came for people struggling with sky-high bills, and those in climate-vulnerable communities who’ve lost loved-ones, homes and more to fire and floods, largely thanks to the production and burning of fossil fuels.

If this government wants to increase its popularity at home and abroad, it should be taxing fossil fuel giants to pay for ambitious climate finance commitments, and for the costs of a just green transition that takes our energy production away from polluting mega-corporations and into our own hands.”

Notes 

1. Global Justice Now is a UK-based campaigning organisation part of a global movement to challenge the powerful and create a more just and equal world. We mobilise people in the UK for change, and act in solidarity with those fighting injustice, particularly in the global south.

1. Data for BP and Shell profits sourced via companies’ quarterly reports.