Among the most eye-catching of the announcements was the commitment unveiled by Mark Carney, the former Bank of England governor, on the conference’s finance day: a pledge that US$130 trillion —four in every 10 dollars under management globally — would be deployed to limit global warming. “This is a watershed,” he said. Quoting the climate activist Greta Thunberg, he added: “It’s not blah blah blah.
To reduce the risk of greenwashing, the U.K. government laid down a single red line, according to Caldecott and the civil servant. Carney’s brainchild would have to agree to work alongside an existing verification body for corporate and financial sector pledges: the U.N.’s Race to Zero. Yet one year on, and just 10 days before COP27, that red line was erased. Gfanz officially relegated the UN-backed body to the status of one adviser among many at the end of last month. The financial institutions under the Gfanz umbrella no longer have to be aligned with the multilateral body meant to uphold their integrity.
As COP negotiators meet in Egypt on Wednesday to discuss how to raise the capital for green energy and climate adaptation, the troubles Gfanz has faced reflect a broader struggle within the financial sector over whether business or government should be responsible for channelling cash into stemming the financial crisis, and whether they should take a purist or “broad church” approach to fossil fuels.
This was especially glaring among the banks who had been convinced to join Carney’s alliance in the unsettled weeks immediately before Glasgow.Article content In June, this continuing activity by Gfanz members and other companies was addressed in a revised, much tougher set of membership rules from Race to Zero. The official interpretation guide to its new criteria made clear that members must “restrict” their facilitation of all new fossil fuel projects, and that “no new coal” must be supported.
Others like Simon Holmes, a competition law expert and visiting professor at Oxford university, say that if the alliance collectively refused to invest in fossil fuels it could face “genuine issues” of antitrust, particularly in the U.S. “From a competition law perspective it can be seen as a collective boycott agreement not to provide a service like finance or insurance to customers,” he says.
Then, one evening in September, “no new coal” was quietly wiped from Race to Zero’s website. The UN-backed body had taken legal advice, it said when asked, and was told the strict language put its own staff at risk. Global banks’ pledges to date put them on track to deliver US$1.9 trillion in energy transition finance a year until 2030, according to research group Autonomous. It says this number is growing but is still roughly half the level of bank support needed for the transition to net zero, which it puts at between US$3 trillion and $5 trillion a year.
The Finance Sector Expert Group, set up during COP26 to develop Race to Zero membership criteria for financial institutions, was quietly disbanded in February. Race to Zero has also postponed plans to set up a new accountability mechanism in order to examine the progress of individual financial institutions. Race to Zero did not respond to requests for comment.Article content
Those trade-offs risk shifting the timeline of the alliance’s path to net zero, especially as it has focused on setting targets over ensuring they are delivered. Other targets are overly broad and open to interpretation. In the U.S., for example, Goldman Sachs’ target of US$750 billion by 2030 includes its advisory business — suggesting it could include the entire value of deals as long as these contribute to the bank’s core pillars of “climate transition and inclusive growth.” The bank declined to comment for this story.