European banks that helped shut down Adani’s Galilee Basin coal frontier in Australia a decade ago are now bankrolling a far larger coal expansion just 150 kilometres away, according to a new report from Reclaim Finance and partner NGOs. The study, "Coal Hypocrisy: European Banks’ Double Standard on Thermal and Metallurgical Coal in Australia", finds that 19 European banks provided US$30.3 billion to companies planning metallurgical coal expansion in Queensland’s Bowen Basin between 2021 and 2025, out of a total of US$105.9 billion from international banks.
The contrast with the Galilee is explicit in the report’s title and findings. More than 70 financial institutions—including more than 20 major banks—refused to finance Galilee thermal coal mines and associated infrastructure a decade ago, leaving Adani to self-fund the heavily downsized Carmichael Mine; no other Galilee project has proceeded since. The report says those refusals “became the foundation of hundreds of bank coal policies worldwide”. Yet in the Bowen Basin, the same banks are financing met coal expansion even though met coal emits more CO₂ when burned and leaks more methane when mined than thermal coal.
“European banks claim to have turned the page on coal, yet they are financing companies planning a massive expansion of met coal in the Bowen Basin which risks emitting more than twice Australia’s domestic climate emissions,” said Yann Louvel, senior policy analyst at Reclaim Finance. “These very same banks have adopted policies to restrict thermal coal financing due to its impacts. Met coal is coal, and there is simply no room for new met coal mines if we want a livable climate. If banks are serious about their climate commitments, they must close this loophole now and exclude all met coal developers.”
The Adani Double Standard
The report identifies the banks with Galilee commitments that are nonetheless financing Bowen Basin met coal developers. Crédit Agricole (US$4.5 billion) and BNP Paribas (US$2.5 billion) are singled out as “particularly striking” given their “early and emphatic refusal to finance similar projects in the Galilee Basin”. Barclays ranks second overall at US$3.4 billion, followed by Santander (US$3.1 billion) , Deutsche Bank (US$3.0 billion) and UBS (US$2.9 billion). BNP Paribas is also BHP’s largest European financier (US$1.3 billion); BHP Mitsubishi Alliance is Queensland’s largest met coal miner and is developing the Peak Downs Continuation project, which plans to mine met coal until 2116. Glencore is the company most heavily financed by European banks overall, with UBS (US$2.1 billion) , Deutsche Bank (US$1.6 billion) and Barclays (US$1.5 billion) as its top financiers.
The Loophole
The report’s central finding is that all 19 European banks restrict project finance for thermal coal mines, and 12 explicitly restrict financing of companies developing thermal coal mines. But only seven restrict met coal projects, and not one restricts finance to the companies developing met coal—which is how these mines are actually funded. The report notes that of the 97 major banks assessed in Reclaim Finance’s Coal Policy Tracker, only 12 exclude finance for met coal in some way.
“The distinction banks draw is commercial, not physical,” the report states. “There is no basis in the chemistry or physics of coal for treating met coal as a lesser climate or health risk than its thermal sibling.”
The Scale of the Bowen Expansion
Australia supplies 42% of global met coal exports, the great majority from the Bowen Basin. In 2023–2024, the basin produced around 209 million tonnes of coal, mostly met coal, and plans are in place to expand capacity by more than 97 million tonnes per year. If all planned expansions proceed, emissions from the basin’s coal would reach roughly 800 million tonnes of CO₂ per year—more than the 705 million tonnes that originally made the Galilee Basin unbankable, and more than twice Australia’s domestic emissions from energy and industry.
Those CO₂ figures understate the climate footprint because they exclude methane. Satellite measurements attributed 1.6 million tonnes of methane to the Bowen Basin alone over 2019–2020—almost double what Australia reports for coal mine methane leaks across the entire country, equivalent to 134 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent per year counting methane’s 20-year atmospheric impact.
The report warns that Bowen and Galilee mines drain into the Fitzroy and Burdekin River catchments, both flowing into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon, putting a UNESCO World Heritage Area at risk through pollution, sedimentation and flow alteration. Proposed mine lease areas cover 123,000 hectares, including 42,500 hectares of potential koala habitat, and would destroy habitat for endangered marsupial gliders. The mines sit on Barada Barna, Widi, Iman and Gaangalu country, and the report says the same Queensland consent framework that Traditional Owners showed to be inadequate in the Galilee applies in the Bowen. Workers and surrounding communities face elevated hospitalisation risks for respiratory and circulatory disease.
Demand is Falling
The report argues that expanding met coal is not only climate-destructive but economically risky. The International Energy Agency expects global met coal demand to decline by 5% between 2025 and 2030 even without new steel decarbonisation policies, and by 56% for coking coal by 2050 under existing government climate pledges. Under the IEA’s net-zero pathway, met coal demand should fall by 36% from 2025 to 2030 and 89% by 2050. “Coal can be completely phased out from steelmaking by the early 2040s” with appropriate policies, according to research by Agora Industry and the Wuppertal Institute cited in the report.
The report closes by invoking Adani’s experience as proof that bank refusals can still stop the Bowen expansion. “Several flagship Bowen mine projects have yet to take a final investment decision (FID), so a refusal by a critical mass of banks to support the companies developing these mines could force these companies to reevaluate their plans,” it states. The report’s launch statement adds: “A refusal by a critical mass of banks could still force their developers to reconsider, as it did in the Galilee a decade ago.”
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