In 2021, the topic of climate change was ubiquitous. In February, the US officially rejoined the Paris Agreement. In August, the sixth IPCC assessment was shocking news. In October, the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 was awarded to science trio Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi, for their research on global warming and the environment. It is clear that the enormous task of carbon emission reduction and limiting global temperature increases is a mission for every sector and every industry – we all can and must be involved in climate action and must all play a vital role in combating climate change.
Fueled by consumer demand for a green value proposition, the financial services sector is waking up to the need to act positively when it comes to corporate sustainability. In 2020, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink’s annual open letter to the world’s CEOs contained an urgent wake-up call: we must act now to remain under two degrees.1 The ECB has analyzed the costs of not transitioning to a more climate-friendly economic approach, and the negative financial impact that would result from such a refusal to transition.