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Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC are among the top banks that have lent billions of euros to the coal sector – despite their much-vaunted environmental credentials, a new investigation has found.

Financing coal is controversial, because it is the dirtiest fossil fuel and responsible for billions of tonnes of emissions of carbon dioxide globally, as well as other pollutants such as soot particles and mercury.

The list of top 20 institutions that have financed coal-mining and coal-fired energy generation reads like a roll-call of the world’s biggest banks, with three American banks – JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America – topping the list. Between them, these three have provided at least *42bn to the coal sector since 2005.

Barclays took fifth place, having lent more than *11.5bn to big coal companies in the last seven years, while RBS came in seventh having lent or raised finance amounting to nearly *11bn over the period. HSBC just scraped into the top 20, with *4.4bn of finance.

The research was compiled by a group of NGOs, including German environmental group Urgewald, the international network BankTrack and Earthlife Africa Johannesburg. It took experts more than seven months to uncover the data, because banks do not declare it publicly – many banks do not know how much they lend or raise finance to the coal sector, or how many shares or other assets they own in coal. The figures were found by examining the public reports of the biggest coal mining and coal-fired power generation companies, and the true finance figures are likely to be much higher.