The former central bank governor said provincial securities regulators are positioned to require companies to report their financial risk related to climate change, and set guidelines for how to do so—but suggested they haven’t done so because of a lack of global standards. “Given how mainstream this issue is now … it’s an anomaly that there’s not consistent global policy on this,” he said in a conference call with Jim Leech, chair of Queen’s University’s Institute for Sustainable Finance Advisory Board. (The Logic)
Talking point: Since leaving his Bank of England job in March, Carney has been focused on making climate-risk financial reporting mandatory worldwide. He plans to have a strategy ready for regulators to adopt in time for the UN climate summit in November 2021. Mandatory reporting is one part of the global transition to net-zero carbon economy, said Carney, which requires investors and lenders to clearly identify and reduce the impacts their portfolio companies have on the climate. That doesn’t mean shutting off funding to Canadian energy companies entirely. Carney said the sector will play an important role in the global transition, as many countries first shift to “relatively clean” gas, and also for R&D in the sector around innovations like carbon capture and blue hydrogen. “We need to put adequate resources behind those opportunities; it won’t all come from the private sector,” he said.