Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has launched a formal review of the risks fossil fuel companies could pose to the UK’s financial stability, entrepreneur and analyst Jeremy Leggett reports, based on news in the Financial Times.
Carney “has written to MPs [Members of Parliament] informing them that his officials have discussed the idea that most of the world’s proven coal, oil, and gas reserves may be ‘unburnable’ if global warming is to be kept within safe limits,” the Times reports. “In light of these discussions, we will be deepening and widening our inquiry into the topic,” Carney told the British Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee October 30.
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“Policy-makers and now central banks are waking up to the fact that much of the world’s oil, coal, and gas reserves will have to remain in the ground unless carbon capture and storage technologies can be developed more rapidly,” responded committee chair Joan Walley. Leggett cites the London-based Carbon Tracker Initiative’s finding that a global climate deal in Paris next year “could sharply undermine the value of such companies
