• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Renewables ‘Set to Soar’ with 440 GW of New Installations in 2023: IEA June 4, 2023
Greek Industrial Giant Announces 1.4-GW Alberta Solar Farm, Canada’s Biggest June 4, 2023
Shift to Remote Work Cuts Commutes, Frees Downtown Space for Affordable Housing June 4, 2023
2.7M Hectares Lost, Nova Scotia at Ground Zero in ‘Unprecedented’ Early Wildfire Season June 4, 2023
Is Equinor’s Bay du Nord ‘Delay’ a Cancellation in Slow Motion? June 1, 2023
Next
Prev

Carney Sees ‘Wall of Opportunity’ in Clean Investment as GFANZ Accused of Stalling Out

November 9, 2022
Reading time: 4 minutes
Primary Author: Compiled by The Energy Mix staff

Policy Exchange/flickr

Policy Exchange/flickr

3
SHARES
 

UN climate finance envoy Mark Carney is pointing to a “wall of opportunity” for clean energy investment, even as a senior banking executive declares that Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ) is stalling out on the voluntary commitments it’s trying to extract from the world’s biggest banks.

“The smart money” is following “an absolute wall of opportunity in just rolling out clean energy at scale,” Carney told Bloomberg TV yesterday, during an interview at this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP 27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
Subscribe

Carney spoke just hours before Stand.Earth reported that the Royal Bank of Canada, the country’s biggest chartered bank, had directed C$9.2 billion in financing and underwriting to “top fossil fuel expansionists” like Enbridge, ExxonMobil, Chevron, TC Energy, and Saudi Aramco since it joined GFANZ in 2021, including $3.4 billion in shale and fracking, $2.7 billion in oilsands, $1.4 billion in coal, and $1.3 billion in liquefied natural gas so far this year. The bank holds more than $16 billion in investments in extreme fossil fuel investments.

“As @RBC greenwashes its climate commitments and touts Indigenous reconciliation rhetoric, the bank is financing toxic fossil fuel expansion projects and violating Indigenous rights,” Stand tweeted. “Net-zero means no new fossil fuel investments.”

Carney’s remarks to Bloomberg focused more on the general potential he sees for climate finance, not the individual banks that were either at risk of being kicked out of GFANZ, like RBC, or threatening to quit over tougher performance standards.

“A lot of the answer to energy security problems that have been exposed by Russia’s illegal war has to do with sustainability,” said Carney, who co-chairs GFANZ and was previously governor of the Bank of Canada, then the Bank of England. “That’s why you’ve seen a five-fold increase in the ambition in the European Union for this decade. That’s why you’ve seen the big rollout with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the United States…these are solutions to not just climate issues, but geopolitical issues.”

As vice-chair of Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management, he said he’s seen the company’s clean portfolio grow “from 20 gigawatts in our pipeline of building renewables to over 100 gigawatts in just 12 months,” suggesting a period when investors will be looking for companies moving faster to reduce emissions.

But Carney was speaking just a week after GFANZ was accused of “quiet-quitting” the Race to Zero Campaign, a UN effort to rally businesses, cities, regions, and investors around a 2050 net-zero target, by keeping emission reduction commitments voluntary for the banks and asset owners whose climate behaviour it aims to influence. “GFANZ, of which Carney is the chief architect, has managed to attract around 100 new signatories over the past year, and now numbers about 550 members representing roughly US$150 trillion in assets under management,” Bloomberg writes. “But climate activists have argued that GFANZ’s expansion has come at the cost of credible net-zero targets,” with proponents of the looser standard contending that a mandatory set of coordinated net-zero goals could leave banks open to anti-trust accusations.

But those complications may mean GFANZ’ influence has run its course, writes Huw van Steenis, senior advisor to the CEO at UBS Group, a Swiss multinational investment bank, in an opinion piece for Reuters. While it “has made a positive contribution,” van Steenis says, “the initiative is starting to hit the limits of what financial institutions can achieve through voluntary cooperation,” a limitation that throws the onus back on governments to unlock more than $3.5 trillion per year in low-carbon investments while COP 27 is under way.

GFANZ has indeed “brought climate risk into bank and asset managers’ boardrooms and into their day-to-day risk management processes,” van Steenis adds, prompting 53 banks to adopt science-based emission reduction targets with 2030 deadlines—53 more than had done so at the beginning of last year. Meanwhile, “firms have worked with regulators to enhance their collective understanding of the financial risks from global warming. More than 30 central banks including the U.S. Federal Reserve have started running climate scenarios on their largest lenders,” potentially leading to higher borrowing costs based on climate risk.

“But voluntary disclosures, sharing best practice, and some peer pressure can only go so far,” he says. “Firms that make voluntary commitments are still subject to the legal and regulatory frameworks where they operate”—that’s the concern about anti-competitive behaviour—and there’s also a sense that carbon reductions run counter to bankers’ fiduciary duty to their investors. Those are the factors that have had GFANZ backing away from Race to Zero and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who had famously prioritized climate risk and fossil fuel divestment, now declaring that his industry won’t play the role of “environmental police”.

Now van Steenis is urging governments to provide “policy clarity” through measures like the U.S. IRA and encourage financing that “helps turn utilities and heavy industry from grey to green”. He also sees the World Bank and other multilateral lenders working through GFANZ to increase the flow of green finance to developing countries.



in Climate Denial & Greenwashing, Community Climate Finance, COP Conferences, Finance & Investment

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

sunrise windmill
International Agencies & Studies

Renewables ‘Set to Soar’ with 440 GW of New Installations in 2023: IEA

June 5, 2023
149
Pixabay
Solar

Greek Industrial Giant Announces 1.4-GW Alberta Solar Farm, Canada’s Biggest

June 4, 2023
130
Oregon Department of Transportation/flickr
Cities & Communities

Shift to Remote Work Cuts Commutes, Frees Downtown Space for Affordable Housing

June 5, 2023
86

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

/MaxPixels

‘Substantial Damage’, No Injuries as Freight Train Hits Wind Turbine Blade

May 25, 2022
14.7k
sunrise windmill

Renewables ‘Set to Soar’ with 440 GW of New Installations in 2023: IEA

June 5, 2023
149
Natural Resources Canada

2.7M Hectares Lost, Nova Scotia at Ground Zero in ‘Unprecedented’ Early Wildfire Season

June 4, 2023
171
Pixabay

Greek Industrial Giant Announces 1.4-GW Alberta Solar Farm, Canada’s Biggest

June 4, 2023
130
debannja/Pixabay

Austin, Texas Council Committee Backs Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

June 4, 2023
92
Oregon Department of Transportation/flickr

Shift to Remote Work Cuts Commutes, Frees Downtown Space for Affordable Housing

June 5, 2023
86

Recent Posts

Clairewych/Pixabay

Demand Surges for Giant Heat Pumps as Europe Turns to District Heating

June 4, 2023
89
nicolasdebraypointcom/pixabay

Factor Gender into Transportation Planning, IISD Analyst Urges Policy-Makers

June 4, 2023
39
moerschy / Pixabay

Federal Climate Plans Must Embrace Community-Driven Resilience

June 4, 2023
55
Equinor

Is Equinor’s Bay du Nord ‘Delay’ a Cancellation in Slow Motion?

June 1, 2023
879
Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-op/Facebook

‘Hinge Moment’ for Humanity Demands ‘YIMBY’ Mentality: McKibben

June 1, 2023
79
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Notley

Notley Would Have Backed Carbon Capture Subsidies, Smith Less Certain: Ex-Pipeline Exec

June 1, 2023
100
Next Post
Catherine McKenna/Twitter

Stop Greenwashing, Set Regulated Net-Zero Targets, McKenna Task Force Urges

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}