Climate finance will be a central theme at the COP26 talks this November in Glasgow, Scotland. On top of advising the British prime minister, Carney is also a United Nations special envoy tasked with steering discussions on how finance can meet the Paris Agreement.
Three people involved in the planning of COP26 expressed concern Carney’s comments could undermine the meeting’s success. They asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the issue.
“A topic of discussion going into COP26 is how do you define net zero,” said Emily Kreps, global director of capital markets at CDP, a leading nonprofit climate-disclosure platform. “Particularly for providers of capital, if they are in a position to say, ‘We are net zero because we bought offsets but don’t look at our dirty coal issues here,’ then the industry as a whole is potentially abdicating responsibility.” Brookfield is rated “F” by CDP.
‘It’s virtually impossible for a company to be a net-zero company now’
During his seven-year tenure at the U.K. central bank, which ended in 2020, Carney also served as chairman of the Financial Stability Board and launched the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, a global benchmark for companies and financiers to assess climate risks. Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP, is the chairman of TCFD. Carney also set up the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets that aims to boost the market for carbon offsets.
At Brookfield, Carney is developing a $7.5 billion impact fund to invest in companies with pathways to net zero. Brookfield owns about 19 gigawatts of solar, wind and hydropower, with another 18 GW in development. If Brookfield was a clean-energy company, it would be on par with global giants such as Orsted AS and NextEra Energy Inc.
Still, Brookfield remains active in fossil fuels. Unearthed, Greenpeace’s investigative platform, identified several fossil-fuel projects where Brookfield is a major shareholder. The asset manager recently made moves to buy billions of dollars of gas and oil infrastructure in Canada, India and the Middle East. An investment in an Australian coal terminal operator and pursuit of a stake in Saudi Aramco’s pipelines have drawn criticism.
Ulf Erlandsson of the nonprofit Anthropocene Fixed Income Institute questioned if such moves can be part of an effective climate transition. “It won’t matter how many solar panels one installs,” he said, “if we don’t reduce actual CO₂ emissions.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.