Banks, Financed Emissions, and the Road to Climate Accountability – A Collaboration with ClientEarth’s Accountable Finance Team

This report is the first output of an ongoing partnership with ClientEarth’s Accountable Finance team, led by Robert Clarke and Dr Alex Bennett.

It was developed under the mentorship of a team from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, led by Dr Joana Setzer, Dr Noah Walker-Crawford, Eoin Jackson, Jameela Joy Reyes, Nicholas Petkov, Tiffanie Chan, with the support of Dr Agnieszka Smoleńska of the Centre for Economic Transition Expertise.

The report, Who Pays for Climate Breakdown? Banks, Financed Emissions, and the Road to Climate Accountability, can be viewed here:

These annexes set out the research underlying the analysis in the report Who Pays for Climate Breakdown? Banks, Financed Emissions, and the Road to Climate Accountability:

In partnership with ClientEarth’s Accountable Finance Team, in the first phase of the project (2025-2026), students from five LSE departments – Law, Anthropology, Geography and Environment, Finance, and Sociology – surveyed how courts across jurisdictions approached causation in climate cases against states and corporations, and catalogued methodologies for measuring financed emissions of the world’s largest banks.

Students received weekly training from LSE experts from the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, CETEx, and TPI, as well as ClientEarth specialists.

Students produced the landmark report and presented it to an expert panel including representatives of Reclaim Finance, InfluenceMap, Milieudefensie, and NatWest Group.

Dr Ashfaq Khalfan, Director of LSE’s Sustainability Regulation Observatory (SRO), produced a condensed Policy Brief based on the students’ report, available here:

In the second phase of the project (2026-2027), students will develop a set of legal principles capable of anchoring future litigation strategies to hold banks accountable for their ‘financed emissions’. The recruitment process of our next cohort of students will start in September 2026.

What students said

‘The clinic’s most significant impact on my understanding of environmental law was the reassurance that it is okay to be a dreamer; it is, in fact, ordinary to face uphill battles and asymmetrical forces when seeking justice in a profit-driven world. Changes to the status quo are birthed within the minds of dreamers and then mediated into the mainstream through action. The clinic has been the breath of oxygen that has enabled me to dream deeper and aim higher. I will carry the passion of my mentors in my heart, the knowledge gained in my mind, and the ethos of the project in my spirit as I continue my quest to become an agent of positive transformation’ (Pablo Sebastián Díez Pinto, 2025-2026 LLM student).

‘Participating in the clinic has given me insight into the process of contributing to change from a legal perspective, right from the start of a movement. Being given the opportunity to contribute research to a field that has only just begun entering mainstream legal scholarship was both exciting and intellectually challenging. I look forward to seeing what becomes of our findings’ (Farah Alaradi, 2023-2026 BA in Law & Anthropology student).