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From commitment to action: a look back at the 2018 Climate Finance Week in Paris

30 November 2018 - Blog post

This week, the finance community gathered in Paris for a series of events focusing on climate change and sustainable development. With more than 1500 participants and 100 speakers from the financial community, the week was marked by major events of this week were the UNEP FI’s Global Roundtable and the 4th Climate Finance Day.

 

 

On one hand, the week began with a ‘reality check’ through the publication on Monday of a report by Oxfam France demonstrating that between 2016-17 French commercial banks reduced investments in renewable energy as much as they increased investments in fossil fuels. On the other hand, the financial community reiterated their engagement with several commitments and calls to action made during these three days including:

 

  • AXA Group, the French global insurer, announced that its newly acquired division, AXA XL will no longer underwrite the construction and operations of coal plants, coal mines, oil sands extraction and pipelines, as well as arctic drilling.
  • Eric Lombard, CEO of the French Caisse des Dépôts announced the lowering of its threshold for carbon exclusion from 20% to 10% of the total of a company’s annual turnover;
  • Bruno Le Maire, Minister for the Economy and Finance of the French Republic called on banks, insurers and asset managers “to make commitments to stop financing mines and coal-fired power plants. These commitments must be controlled and transparent. If these commitments are not met, they will be made binding.”
  • François Villeroy de Galhau, Gouvernor of the Banque de France highlighted that the publication of the Network for Greening the Financial System’s (NGFS) first progress report in October. This report represents an important step as for the first time this coalition of 21 supervisors and central banks unanimously acknowledged that as climate-related risks are a source of financial risk – and thus it is within the mandates of central banks and supervisors to ensure the financial system is resilient to these risks.

 

 

I4CE contributed to discussions throughout the week

Benchmarking emerging practice: In the run-up to the week, I4CE released week a report produced with WWF France presenting a first stock-take of the implementation of the Article 173-VI of the French Energy Transition Law, and its impact on the evolution of reporting and investment management practices.

 

Taking stock: Pierre Ducret, I4CE’s President, and Maria Scolan (Caisse des Dépôts) published the special report on finance of the 2018 Global Observatory on non-State Climate Action. The report presents the progress made towards the greening of the global financial system. It gave a concrete basis for discussions for Climate Finance Day, taking stock of private and public actors’ commitments and achievements on green and climate finance issues.

 

Moving from commitments to action: As Secretariat of the Climate Action in Financial Institutions Initiative, Benoit Leguet, I4CE’s Managing Director moderated a panel session of Climate Finance Day that presented the concrete experience of 5 of the 42 financial institutions participating in this Initiative in making climate change an operational priority across business lines.

 

Read the summary of the session

 

Advancing research: I4CE organized a side-event with the Institut Louis Bacheliet, the Banque de France and Finance for Tomorrow bringing together academics, finance practitioners and regulators to discuss together the recent research advances in the field of modelling climate-related financial risks, provide a better understanding of the role of central banks in addressing these risks, and formulate the relevant research agenda for the years to come.

To learn more
  • 03/31/2023 Foreword of the week
    Sustainable Finance: the EU enters the final stretch

    Elections of the European Parliament are coming up in June 2024 and will be followed by the renewal of the Commission. Hence, there are only a few months left to finalize the implementation of the renewed sustainable finance strategy adopted in 2021. This strategy aims, among other things, to increase the contribution of the financial sector to sustainability. It seems too early to already draw conclusions on how the Commission delivered on its objectives as some key legislative and supervisory processes are still under way. This newsletter focusses on some of these ongoing processes that receive quite some attention in the public debate

  • 03/30/2023
    Climate stress tests: what co-benefits can we expect for transition financing

    Since their introduction, climate stress tests have taken a lot of space in the public debate. Put in the spotlight by supervisors and the NGFS, their primary objective is to encourage banks to integrate climate-related risks into their activities and to carry out an initial assessment of the banks’ capacity to deal with these risks.

  • 03/30/2023 Op-ed
    Corporate due diligence: what is the added value for climate?

    Negotiations are under way on the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, commonly known as the “CSDDD”. Regarding climate, an obligation of climate transition plan for companies is discussed. But let’s keep careful on this point. Europe is in the process of developing climate transition plan requirements in two other directives on corporate sustainability reporting (CSRD) and on prudential requirements for banks (CRD). We must therefore ensure that the discussions result in a final version of the CSDDD that is consistent with these other texts and at the same time complementary.

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