Report highlights: 

• The majority of the fossil financing in Southeast Asia (65%) comes from international banks from 2016 to 2024, amounting to a total of USD 45.167 billion. Of this, 71.9% was directed towards coal projects.
• JBIC’s title of ‘dirtiest’ foreign financier is attributed to its funding of both coal and gas power plants in the region, coupled with limited policies that notably fail to set a timeline for phasing out coal and gas financing.
• Financial institutions from Japan, China, and South Korea are the primary backers of coal projects in the region due to the absence of policies that exclude coal financing. 
• Meanwhile, Japanese banks, followed by Global Northern banks, are the biggest contributors to gas expansion in Southeast Asia. 
• The domestic banks that financed the most downstream coal were from countries with significant operational capacity added after the Paris Agreement: Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia.
• Banks from Malaysia and Thailand are the leading domestic banks with the most commissioned gas capacity post-Paris Agreement. 

Ahead of the 46th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit, civil society organizations (CSOs) are urging domestic and international banks to halt financing coal and gas projects, citing a new report that exposes Japan as the region’s largest foreign financier of fossil fuel. 

The report reveals that from 2016 to 2024, banks funnelled over USD 45 billion into downstream coal and gas projects in Southeast Asia. The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), an export credit agency, is identified as the “dirtiest” foreign financier, responsible for 30% of total financing. JBIC’s significant financing of fossil fuel expansion–outpacing international and Southeast Asian banks–contradicts its G7 and Paris Agreement commitments to phase out unabated coal and support clean energy. 

“Japanese banks, especially JBIC, are enabling the continued buildout of coal and gas infrastructure in Southeast Asia, putting climate goals and local communities at risk. It’s time for these institutions to match their promises with real actions by ending fossil fuel financing and supporting a just transition to renewable energy,” said Gerry Arances, Executive Director of the Center for Energy, Ecology and Development (CEED) and Convenor of the Energy Shift Southeast Asia. 

CEED published the scorecard, the first comprehensive assessment of its kind in the region, together with the Center for Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), Energy Shift Southeast Asia, the People’s Coalition for the Rights to Water (KRuHA), RimbaWatch, and Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia (WALHI). 

The report evaluates 35 major banks’ climate policies and fossil fuel financing. It highlights a persistent gap between the sustainability rhetoric of banks such as Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), Mizuho, and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), and their continued investments in fossil fuels. 

These banks, despite pledging coal phaseouts, recently withdrew from the UN-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance, raising further doubts about their climate commitments. 

“Japanese banks have been involved in various coal and gas power projects in ASEAN on an unprecedented scale. This increase has become a way for banks to continue to reap profits without realizing that coal and gas financing lock-in complicates the development of renewable energy and makes many countries face long-term energy insecurity,” said Bhima Yudhistira, Executive Director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS). 

The report’s findings come at a crossroads for ASEAN, according to Arances. As Malaysia hosts the 2025 ASEAN Summit, the region faces mounting climate risks and a narrowing window to achieve the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 goals of sustainability, food security, and resilient, inclusive growth. 

The report also identifies Malaysian banks, Malayan Banking and CIMB, among the “dirtiest” with their massive support for gas plant expansion across the region, including in Thailand.

“Financial institutions, both international and domestic, must halt new fossil fuel investments and redirect finance toward renewable energy at the scale demanded by the climate crisis. Anything less will entrench the region in a cycle of escalating disasters, broken promises, and irreversible environmental destruction. ASEAN ambitions must now be matched by absolute action, and the time to act is now,” said Arances.

The full report is available here.

The methodology is available here.

This press release was originally published on Energy Shift SEA website.