HSBC Hit by Backlash From Green Clients After Net Zero Exit

An HSBC Holdings Plc bank branch in Maidstone, UK, on Friday, April 25, 2025. HSBC are due to report their first-quarter earnings on Tuesday, April 29. Photo by Chris Ratcliffe /Bloomberg

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(Bloomberg) — HSBC Holdings Plc faces a rebellion from some of its green clients angered by what they characterize as the London-based bank’s decision to backtrack on its climate commitments. 

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Dale Vince, founder of green energy firm Ecotricity Ltd., said in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday that his company “just left” HSBC, and has taken its “£600 million green economy turnover elsewhere.” In an interview on Wednesday, he noted that the company has been in the process of pulling its business from HSBC for a while. Ecotricity will instead be using Lloyds Banking Group Plc, he said. 

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“People care where their pension money goes and who they bank with,” Vince said by phone. “That is the start of a lot of grass roots power.”

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An HSBC spokesperson declined to comment. A spokesperson for Lloyds didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Last week, HSBC became the first UK bank to leave the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which is the industry’s largest climate group. The exit follows comments from HSBC’s chief sustainability officer, Julian Wentzel, who earlier this year cautioned against what he called a negative “bias” toward the carbon economy. 

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The NZBA withdrawal puts HSBC in the same camp as Wall Street’s biggest banks, which quit the alliance in quick succession after the re-election of Donald Trump in November. An HSBC spokesperson said on Friday that even though the bank has left NZBA, it “remains resolutely focused” on supporting its customers’ transition plans and delivering on its own ambition of reaching net zero financed emissions by 2050.

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HSBC counts some of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies among its clients, including BP Plc, Saudi Aramco and Chevron Corp. All three have received new financing from HSBC this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 

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At the same time, the bank has been stepping up capital allocations to the green economy. For every dollar HSBC provided to the fossil-fuel industry — either via direct loans or debt and equity underwriting — it allocated $1.49 to green projects through the end of 2023, according to BloombergNEF’s latest analysis. That’s better than the industry average, though below the 1-to-4 ratio of brown-to-green capital allocations that BloombergNEF says is needed to align with the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C.

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Against that backdrop, other green clients have indicated they’re also planning to end their relationships with HSBC. Empire Engineering, a renewable energy consultancy, is now looking for a new bank after more than a decade of being a client at HSBC, according to Karl Davis, a managing director at the Bristol-based firm.

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“Following HSBC’s disappointing announcement” that it is leaving NZBA, “we have begun actively looking for a new business bank which doesn’t have its head in the sand regarding climate change,” he told Bloomberg. 

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TerraLigo Ltd., a research consultancy focused on climate solutions, is also pulling its business from HSBC, according a LinkedIn comment by its founder, Richard Johnston.