U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is prepared to gather together the heads of development banks to persuade them to stop fossil fuel project funding, according to Bloomberg.
The Treasury Secretary intends to “articulate our expectations that the MDBs align their portfolios with the Paris Agreement and net-zero goals as urgently as possible,” according to a written speech she is set to deliver at a climate conference in Italy.
The speech, soon to be delivered, follows just days behind a similar message that the financial community received at the G20, where financial leaders for the first time every acknowledged that carbon pricing was at least a potential tool in addressing climate change.
While Bloomberg notes that while development banks have never been responsible for the big bucks behind most fossil fuel projects, those funds are largely seen as a stepping stone for the projects to secure hefty commercial funding.
Since the pandemic began, development banks have thrown just $3 billion into oil and nat gas, with $0 going towards coal projects for the first time ever.
Meanwhile, development banks have funded $12 billion in clean energy projects.
But it is precisely these natural gas projects that will allow many countries to quickly and efficiently transition away from coal.
Prior to her appointment as Treasury Secretary, Yellen was criticized for her fossil fuel stock holdings. The Secretary vowed to divest her holdings in all fossil fuel companies as well as any companies that support fossil fuels.
Nevertheless, even before her time as Treasury Secretary and the chairman of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), Yellen has been a staunch supporter of the environment and highly critical of the role fossil fuels have played in greenhouse gas emissions.
The FSOC is tasked with identifying risks to the financial stability of the United States, among other things.
In May, Yellen said that the FSOC will work to improve climate-related financial disclosures and other sources of data to better measure potential exposures to climate-related financial risks, adding that it is her primary tool in assessing climate change risks and coming up with policies that will promote the transition to a low-carbon economy.
