GLASGOW- Banks, insurers and investors with $130 trillion at their disposal pledged on Wednesday to put combating climate change at the center of their work, and gained support in the form of efforts to put green investing on a firmer footing.
And in another development at the COP26 U.N. climate conference, at least 19 countries are expected to commit on Thursday to ending public financing for fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of 2022, two sources said.
In an earlier announcement at the meeting in Scotland, financial institutions accounting for around 40 percent of the world’s capital committed to assuming a “fair share” of the effort to wean the world off fossil fuels.
A main aim of the COP26 talks is to secure enough national promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions – mostly from coal, oil and gas – to keep the rise in the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
But how to meet those pledges, particularly in the developing world, is still being worked out, and it will require a lot of money.
U.N. climate envoy Mark Carney, who assembled the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), put the figure at $100 trillion over the next three decades, and said the finance industry must find ways to raise private money to take the effort far beyond what states alone can do.
“The money is here – but that money needs net zero-aligned projects and (then) there’s a way to turn this into a very, very powerful virtuous circle – and that’s the challenge,” the former Bank of England governor told the summit.
Carney’s comments reflect a problem often cited by investors who, in the face of a myriad of climate-related risks, need to be sure that they are being accounted for in a transparent and preferably standardized way globally. – Reuters
