JPMorgan Chase said Thursday it would invest $2.5 trillion through 2030 to back sustainability and development initiatives, including $1 trillion purely for efforts to expand its green ambitions.
The plan, which begins this year, and extends until the end of 2030, will help support a pledge in October 2020 to adapt the firm’s financing to be in line with the Paris Agreement, the company said.
The commitment covers a range of initiatives: On the climate front, it will help expand a dedicated Green Economy team, which was announced last week and focuses on areas from renewables to agriculture to food technology.
The company also said the $2.5 trillion would support “development finance,” centered on helping meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and community development in developed markets. That includes a previously announced $30 billion commitment to advance racial equity, the company said. In 2020, the company said it had facilitated $220 billion worth of transactions classified as supporting sustainable development, including $55 billion in green initiatives.
The announcement comes on the heels of CEO Jamie Dimon’s lengthy letter to shareholders last week, which emphasized both the impacts of climate change and inequality, while projecting optimism about a post-pandemic economic boom.
JPMorgan has been under pressure to provide more detail on how exactly it will meet its commitment to carbon neutrality, including whether it will shift its policies on the companies it finances. Such commitments, critics say, tend to be long on hyperbole and short on details.
However, there’s no denying that ESG (environmental, social, and governance) funds and green investing have become increasingly big business over the past year, drawing interest from many of the world’s largest asset managers.
In December, JPMorgan launched its first green ETF—joining a sector that attracted record inflows in 2020—and in February, the firm’s global head of ESG debt capital markets told Bloomberg that global sales of “green bonds” could reach $150 billion this year, jumping from $8.9 billion in 2020.
