RBC, BMO could soon follow Wall Street out of climate club
Canada’s largest banks may be the next group to walk away from the industry’s biggest climate-finance alliance.
The Net-Zero Banking Alliance has suffered an exodus in recent weeks, with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. all leaving. The moves coincide with intensifying Republican attacks on what U.S. conservatives call “woke” capitalism and criticisms that such voluntary alliances haven’t had a meaningful impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Against that backdrop, two of Canada’s biggest lenders are now showing signs of reconsidering their own membership.
“Pulling out of NZBA, hypothetically, doesn’t lead to a non-commitment to net zero or climate change,” Royal Bank of Canada chief executive Dave McKay said Tuesday at an industry conference hosted by his firm in Toronto. “It just means that mechanism, that organization that fostered oversight and policies and rules around what you can and can’t do and how you report, maybe that isn’t the right mechanism to do it.”
Speaking at the same event, Bank of Montreal chief executive Darryl White said the bank is still a “member of the alliance. At least we are today.”
As of Wednesday, NZBA’s website still listed the lenders as members.
The U.S. banks that have left the alliance say they haven’t changed their net zero emissions goals and they remain supportive of clients’ plans to reduce their carbon footprints.
White said that regardless of the “mechanism,” BMO remains committed to the transition to a low-carbon economy. At the same time, he said the company also has “a commitment, particularly here in Canada, to our legacy energy customers completely. We won’t abandon that.”
Canad
Read more on financialpost.com
