The Treasury Secretary of the United States, Janet Yellen, said on Tuesday that financial institutions should take a larger feel of urgency to invest in a net- zero economy in meetings with the head of Bank of America and other finance CEOs.
John Morton, a former private equity adviser and Treasury's first climate counselor, told reporters that Yellen would explain new U.S. government policies aimed at moving towards a clean energy economy and to learn what steps were needed to improve work by the private sector.
The Secretary will both applaud the commitments that were made and encourage a greater sense of urgency, Morton told reporters ahead of the meetings at the United Nations Conference on Climate COP 26 where he said investing private sector capital should fund an estimated annual gap of $2 trillion to $3 trillion to achieve a global net- zero economy and increase billions pledged by governments.
The world s major economies are expected to achieve the Paris Agreement target, as part of a larger U.S. push to galvanize efforts by the world s major economies to reach the Paris Agreement target.
Treasury would participate in a roundtable organized by the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero GFANZ and Mark Carney, a former Bank of England governor, who is now serving as the UN's special envoy for climate finance.
A source told a group that the participants would include Mike Bloomberg, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, and John Doerr, chairman of Kleiner Perkins.
Morton said Yellen would talk with executives about what they would see as the biggest hurdles to achieve net- zero targets.
He said the single most important question is how large financial institutions do transition from current activities to a net zero posture, and how quickly they do that, as the question is ultimately the question of how large financial institutions transition from current activities to a net zero posture. It will be the most important factor in determining whether we can achieve a more broader global net zero goals. The Financial Stability Oversight Council, which oversees U.S. regulatory agencies, identified climate change as a risk to the U.S. financial system and urged regulators to make it a central concern last month.
Morton said that the importance of the FSOC report cannot be understated because it would help galvanize more action.
He said that they considered climate-related financial risks as a serious indication of the seriousness with which they take this issue.