Banks, investment groups, and asset managers move away from climate pledges as second Trump term begins
"Global financial sector dropping key green pledges as Trump takes office", 20 January 2025
"The second Trump administration is expected to strike a blow to efforts to align the global financial sector with the path to net zero, with banks, asset managers and industry groups already moving to accommodate the incoming president’s avowed policy of “drill, baby, drill”.
As authorities declared 2024 the hottest on record, atmospheric carbon dioxide leapt by a record amount and fires ravaged Los Angeles, a key private sector climate alliance, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) abandoned a requirement that members be aligned to the Paris agreement.
That was followed by a network of net zero asset managers suspending work, and deleting from its website its statement of commitments that members must adopt, after BlackRock, the biggest of them all, quit its ranks.
As Trump takes office with an agenda of reversing US green policies, seen as part of a “woke” agenda at which he and his followers have taken aim, analysts and observers expect that worse is yet to come...
BlackRock, which manages funds worth $11.5tn, quit the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative, saying its membership had “caused confusion regarding BlackRock’s practices and subjected us to legal inquiries from various public officials”. Almost immediately, NZAM suspended its monitoring of members’ progress towards commitments, and announced a review “to ensure NZAM remains fit for purpose in the new global context”.
Paddy McCully, a senior energy transition analyst at Reclaim Finance, said: “NZAM’s requirements of its members were so weak as to be to mainly symbolic, but symbolism can be important, and Wall Street saying it will no longer cooperate to finance the energy transition sends a message to big polluters that they can carry on with business as usual.”....
GFANZ and NZAM have been approached for comment."