JPMorgan adds grid and nuclear to green-finance eligibility, reports 49% of $2.5tn goal

JPMorgan widened the eligibility criteria for its green financing target to count grid and nuclear energy lending, and reported 49% progress against its $2.5 trillion sustainable development financing goal. The broadened criteria include low-carbon energy financing, including grid and nuclear, and "low-carbon energy at diversified power companies," ESG Dive reported. The bank has separately mobilized $520 billion against the green goal, which it puts at 52%.

For 2025, JPMorgan reported $217 billion toward the $2.5 trillion goal: $96 billion for the green goal, $92 billion of development finance and $28 billion of community development. This publication reported on Oct 15 that JPMorgan had booked $1.2 trillion, or 48% of the goal. The latest disclosure puts progress at 49%. Because the bank has tied some of that progress to the broader eligibility criteria, the percentage is not a clean measure of new lending. At the 2025 pace, the remaining $1.3 trillion would take about six years.

The updated 2035 carbon-intensity targets call for cutting the energy mix's carbon intensity 51% from a 2019 baseline. The targets also cover operational oil and gas portfolio intensity, down 47% from a baseline, and electric power portfolio carbon intensity, down 79% from its baseline. JPMorgan also set targets for auto manufacturing, aviation, shipping, iron and steel and cement.

JPMorgan retained a 2030 goal to cut aluminum portfolio carbon intensity 22% from a revised 2021 baseline; intensity is up 19.5% from that baseline as of end-2025.

Heather Zichal, the bank's global head of sustainability, wrote in an Oct 14 blog that the changes are "rooted" in what the bank has learned since it set the targets in 2021, including that "finance is often not the binding constraint" and that "financed emissions are an imperfect metric." She named workforce gaps, low demand, policy uncertainty, and permitting, interconnection or supply chain problems as the more usual reasons a project stalls.

JPMorgan also announced the creation of a Center for Energy and the Environment, which ESG Dive reported will focus on meeting rising energy demand while balancing affordability, security, reliability and sustainability, the "Four Forces" in Zichal's framing. "The world needs more energy," she wrote, citing factories, AI, electrification and energy access.