It was a dank, drizzly February evening when about 120 people gathered in the brightly lit art gallery of London\u2019s Guildhall<\/a>, surrounded by gold-framed paintings ranging from Pre-Raphaelites to realists.<\/p>\n At the event, Alok Sharma, a former member of the UK parliament who served as president-designate of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2021, announced the launch of the Transition Finance Council<\/a>. The goal of the London-based group, which includes banking executives, is to rally the City of London, companies and policymakers to scale funding for decarbonization efforts at home and abroad.<\/p>\n The intention is \u201cto ensure that London is positioned as a preeminent financial hub for transition financing\u201d and to \u201cdeliver at scale the finance to transition the global economy\u201d to cleaner energy sources, Sharma said in his speech.<\/p>\n As Sharma pointed out, it was five years ago almost to the day that a similar event took place in the same building. The UK government, together with the Bank of England, had rallied six times as many people for the launch of what was called the private finance agenda<\/a> for COP26.<\/p>\n That gathering was a more boisterous affair. The room was \u201cpacked to the rafters,\u201d Sharma recalled. Mark Carney, then BOE governor, took the stage to interview legendary biologist<\/a> and broadcaster David Attenborough. Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, dialed in<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was \u201cthe point at which talk of sustainable finance and climate action moved from being a [corporate social responsibility] issue to being a C-suite issue,\u201d Sharma said. A year later, Carney introduced<\/a> the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, an industry initiative uniting firms with more than $70 trillion of assets to accelerate the transition to net zero.<\/p>\n Much, of course, has changed since then.<\/p>\n Starting in December, all of the largest US and Canadian banks began fleeing the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, itself once part of the broader GFANZ framework. And last week, Australia\u2019s Macquarie Group Ltd. said it too was retreating from<\/a> the coalition.<\/p>\n The defections occurred as financial institutions seek to avoid right-wing attacks on sustainability and renewable energy, a US Republican-led war on behalf of the oil industry that\u2019s only intensified with Donald Trump\u2019s return to the White House. The insurance sector\u2019s climate alliance also has been discontinued<\/a>, while a similar group in the fund-management industry is on pause<\/a> as it seeks to ensure that it remains \u201cfit for purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s \u201ca lot of turmoil,\u201d said Nina Seega<\/a>, director of the Centre for Sustainable Finance at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. \u201cRhetoric is shifting and climate denial is becoming much more mainstream, so you then see a shift in the way different financial institutions are dealing with that.\u201d Some are under more pressure than others, she said, but \u201cnone are immune.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, a few minutes before Sharma took the microphone to announce the Transition Finance Council\u2019s formation, one chief sustainability officer (CSO) of a large UK-based investment manager was asking attendees who they thought would be the next company to retreat from net zero.<\/p>\n The query wasn\u2019t surprising. CSOs face a more difficult landscape these days, what with big firms like JPMorgan Chase & Co. and BlackRock Inc. quitting climate-finance groups. On Wednesday, HSBC announced it\u2019s pushed back its deadline to meet a number of key climate targets by two decades. As more companies back away, there are serious questions about the financial industry\u2019s long-term commitment\u2014and capacity\u2014to help slow increasingly catastrophic global warming.<\/p>\n Forced to battle headwinds both inside and outside their firms, many CSOs are concerned they may no longer have the full support of their companies and leadership teams.<\/p>\n \u201cFinance is being politicized, if not weaponized,\u201d said Clemens Calice, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who set up his own investment and advisory firm, Cygnum Capital. \u201cCompanies are under increasing pressure to align with a side or an agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n For CSOs, all of this amounts to a \u201cvery challenging operating environment,\u201d said James Alexander<\/a>, chief executive of the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association. Politics and policy have \u201cbecome much more fractured,\u201d making judgment calls \u201cmuch harder to make.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, he said, \u201cif you\u2019re managing money, your responsibility is to consider risks, and sustainability is undeniably one of those risks.\u201d<\/p>\n Britain stands out as a rare example of a country that\u2019s advancing on climate action. Seven of the world\u2019s 10 largest economies missed a recent deadline to file updated emissions-saving plans with the United Nations. The UK was the only one to outline a strategy for the next decade that\u2019s anywhere close to consistent with the Paris Agreement target to keep warming below 1.5C.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very pleased to say\u201d that the UK \u201chas a government which recognizes that there is no trade-off between economic growth and the drive to decarbonize the economy,\u201d Sharma said. The country is \u201cuniquely positioned to lead.\u201d<\/p>\n (GFANZ is co-chaired by Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, and Mary Schapiro, the former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.)<\/em><\/p>\n North Carolina-based Duke Energy Corp., one of the biggest US power providers, removed a mention of climate targets in its latest earnings release as the company builds more natural gas plants and even reconsiders its plans for coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Duke said in its third-quarter earnings release last year<\/a> that it was \u201cexecuting an ambitious clean energy transition\u201d and noted its goals to emit net-zero methane by 2030 and net-zero carbon by 2050.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.insurancejournal.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/02\/chief-executive-officer-of-blackrock-larry-fink-bloomberg-580x387.jpg\")
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Sustainable Finance in Brief<\/h3>\n
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