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UK banks lent or underwrote $8.3bn to coal companies between 2022 and 2025 – more capital than any other European financial institution deployed into the sector. This matters because most UK banks have published net-zero commitments that explicitly exclude coal by 2030 or 2035. The gap between stated climate policy and actual lending behaviour is material. It reveals the mechanics of greenwashing at scale: a bank can pledge to phase coal while its underwriting desk funds new coal projects or refinances existing assets through syndicated loans where the UK bank's role remains opaque to regulators and the public. The sector is supposed to be in terminal decline. Yet UK financiers are bankrolling the opposite. This is not an accident – it reflects weak accountability mechanisms, inadequate climate governance in board-level loan decisions, and the structural incentive to capture fees over climate impact. For boards and compliance officers, the question is whether your bank's net-zero target includes scope 3 emissions from financed assets, whether that target is independently verified, and whether your credit committee has binding exclusions or merely guidelines. A pledge without enforcement is performance.