Wall Street breaks from net-zero climate alliance ahead of Trump term

However, since December, six of the world's largest banks, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America, have all separately announced their leaving the alliance, which encourages its member banks to additionally "design, set, and achieve" science-based, net-zero targets.

The banks said that they remain committed to emission reduction targets, but they will do so independently.

"We will continue to work independently to advance the interests of our Firm, our shareholders and our clients and remain focused on pragmatic solutions to help further low-carbon technologies while advancing energy security," a spokesperson for J.P. Morgan, the latest bank to withdraw from the alliance, said in a statement.

BlackRock, the world's largest investment firm, also announced on Thursday it was separating from a major climate group, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, which works with asset managers to attain net-zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.

"The sudden exodus of these big US banks out of the NZBA is a lily-livered effort to avoid criticism from Trump and his climate denialist cronies," said Paddy McCully, a senior analyst at Reclaim Finance, the Guardian reported. 

"A few years ago, when climate change was at the front of the political agenda, the banks were keen to boast of their commitments to act on climate," McCully added. "Now that the political pendulum has swung in the other direction, suddenly acting on climate does not seem so important for the Wall Street lenders."