Institutional investors hold $6,500,000,000,000 in coal, oil and gas companies. We track who holds what and make that data available to everyone.

What Is Investing in Climate Chaos?

Investing in Climate Chaos is a project of Urgewald. Our dataset tracks the shareholdings and bondholdings of over 8,400 institutional investors in coal, oil, and gas companies. Institutional investors are financial actors such as pension funds, insurance companies, banks, and asset managers that invest large amounts of capital on behalf of others. This is the third update of Investing in Climate Chaos and, to our knowledge, the most extensive publicly available dataset on institutional investors' holdings in fossil fuel companies. We make this data public because investment markets are one of the least transparent parts of the fossil fuel financing system, and because campaigns can only target what they can see.

Fossil fuels are the primary driver of global heating. The consequences – extreme weather, rising sea levels, droughts, displacement – are already being felt across the world, and fossil fuels are linked to geopolitical tensions, conflicts and war worldwide. But instead of transitioning, the fossil fuel industry is expanding. 95% of coal companies lack a transition plan. On the oil and gas side, 96% of upstream companies are still exploring or developing new resources. Around half of the oil and gas industry's short-term expansion plans involve high-risk unconventional production methods, including fracking, ultra-deep drilling, tar sands, coalbed methane, and Arctic extraction.