World’s largest banking climate coalition shaken up under Trump — but experts warn agenda could endure ‘underground’

The world’s biggest coalition of major banks committed to aligning its investments with fighting climate change has paused its activities and is looking to eliminate its member structure, though some energy sector experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the shift may not signal its total demise.

Several major banks including Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Citi, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs pulled out of the United Nations-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) weeks before President Donald Trump returned to office, and now the NZBA is halting activity and preparing to vote on restructuring the initiative, NZBA announced on Wednesday. While this may signify a shift away from climate alarmism, it is unlikely that so-called environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) is going away soon, several energy experts told the DCNF.

“The Net-Zero Banking Alliance is an illegal ESG cartel, violating anti-trust and RICO laws. Worried about investigation and prosecution, its members are desperate to somehow take their illegal activities underground. Their new plan is to reformulate from openly acting as a gang to just posting a set of general principles on a web site,” Senior fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute Steve Milloy told the DCNF. “No one should be fooled. Efforts to pressure, if not hijack corporations to advance the leftist political agenda are not going away. They are just morphing into som

NZBA is an organization of lenders aiming to “[align] their lending, investment, and capital markets activities with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.” The alliance is now having remaining members vote on whether the organization should abandon its membership-based structure or become an advisory body without members, according to NZBA.

Several energy sector experts told the DCNF that this change is a positive sign that the climate alarmism movement is losing influence, though they remain skeptical that consumer’s fight against ESG is over. Proponents of ESG investing argue it makes capitalism more sustainable and environmentally conscious, while critics of organizations like the NZBA argue that large banks and asset managers are acting in concert to breach their fiduciary duty by putting objectives other than maximizing client returns first.

“The collapse of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance is a direct result of banks trying to push political agendas instead of doing their job: financing prosperity. These firms are tired of taking heat for their climate virtue signaling and would rather continue their discrimination against American energy in the dark,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the DCNF. “But make no mistake, they will find no relief until they completely abandon their Paris-aligned, ESG-driven, DEI-laced net zero agendas. This is a major defeat for the climate alarmist movement, as more Americans recognize that affordable, reliable energy is essential to human flourishing, and net zero is fundamentally incompatible with that goal.”

While former President Joe Biden prioritized climate goals, routed billions to green initiatives and used his first veto to defend a rule on ESG investing, Trump campaigned against Biden’s energy policies that he has termed the “green new scam.” Notably, investors have been pulling out of green energy projects in 2025 as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is phasing out Biden-era wind and solar tax credits.

Some energy policy experts argue that NZBA’s shake-up will not mean the end for ESG investing, though the major shift in the political climate is a boon for energy abundance.

“With the abandonment of these net-zero alliances, and NZBA hemorrhaging members, these financial institutions have lost a major forum for collusion, but we must remain vigilant as many of these big banks continue to push an ideological agenda at the expense of their customers,” Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, told the DCNF. “The collapse of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance marks a major victory for consumers who have been subject to radical ESG policies that put a political agenda over economic prosperity.”

Gabriella Hoffman, director of Independent Women’s Center for Energy and Conservation, told the DCNF that “NZBA’s collapse is another nail in net-zero’s coffin. Net-zero is a costly energy policy that leads to energy insecurity without delivering any tangible results for the environment. Instead, both the public and private sectors are replacing net-zero guidance with energy abundance posturing. As they say: nature is healing.”

NZBA did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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