Green economy businesses leave HSBC after bank’s NZBA exit

UK businesses dedicated to the green economy are leaving HSBC after the bank announced its departure from the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) last week.

“All companies that believe in net zero, aka the green economy – should ditch HSBC,” wrote Dale Vince, Founder of UK green energy company Ecotricity, in a Linkedin post announcing that his business would now be taking its £600 million turnover elsewhere.  

Ecotricity’s decision comes after HSBC announced its exit from the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) – the first European bank to depart the climate initiative after a massive exodus from US and Canadian banks at the start of 2025.

HSBC’s decision to leave Net Zero Banking Alliance

The British bank says it will “remain engaged with the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero to support the mobilisation of capital towards the net zero transition”, and will continue to use the latest scientific evidence and credible industry-specific pathways to set financed emissions targets. 

But HSBC’s departure from the NZBA comes at a time of reduced climate ambition for the banking sector and the bank itself – which recently delayed its operational emissions reduction target by 20 years and reduced the weighting of ESG criteria in executive pay. 

Last month, the latest edition of the Banking on Climate Chaos report showed that bank financing to fossil fuels increased in 2024, for the first time in three years. 

Shareholder group ShareAction, which just weeks ago called on HSBC to strengthen its climate ambition, “strongly condemned” HSBC's decision and called it “yet another troubling signal around the bank's commitment to addressing the climate crisis”. 

So for climate-conscious businesses, HSBC’s NZBA exit is just the latest in a series of announcements suggesting that the bank is no longer seeking to support an ambition energy transition.

Is your corporate bank aligned with your climate work?

In response to Vince’s post, several other CEOs and founders said they would be following suit and leaving HSBC – including offshore wind specialist Karl Davis, who manages two Bristol-based renewable consultancies, and sustainable materials innovation firm CPI, which moved to The Co-operative Bank.

Others said they had considered moving their business banking to HSBC in recent months and were relieved to have chosen other options. 

These decisions have reignited the debate around companies’ relationships with their financial partners, and whether they may be unwittingly contributing to the very problem their business is trying to solve – through investments, savings and pension funds. 

Some professionals commenting under Vince’s post shared a tool they used to check whether their bank was aligned with their companies’ climate goals: bank.green was developed in association with NGO BankTrack, which tracks banks’ involvement in the fossil fuel sector.