The global banking industry’s net zero target-setting group has announced it will shut down immediately, amid faltering climate commitments around the world.
The Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), which was rocked by a wave of departures after Donald Trump’s re-election, said its remaining members had “voted to transition from a member-based alliance and to establish its guidance as a framework”.
“As a result of this decision, NZBA will cease operations immediately,” a spokesperson said.
Sustainable investment campaigners offered mixed reactions to the move. Jeanne Martin, co-director of corporate engagement at the responsible investment group ShareAction, described it as “bitterly disappointing”.
She said: “Senior bankers need to be far more courageous in this decisive moment for all our futures and must use their influence to push up standards for accountability on climate if we are to stand any chance of making the clean energy transition happen.”
But Lucie Pinson, the director of Reclaim Finance, said she “won’t mourn” the demise of the NZBA. “Like other financial alliances of its kind, it brought little – if anything – to the climate, and was doomed to fail,” she said. “Its purpose was never to take real action, but to create the illusion of measures in order to ward off the risk of regulation.
“At least its demise brings clarity: the institutions genuinely committed to containing global warming will continue to act. But the massive reallocation of financial flows toward solutions cannot happen without intervention from policymakers and regulators. Their action is essential to limit climate change and the systemic risks it entails. For both, the priority remains ending the financing of fossil fuel expansion.”
On paper, the NZBA, which was convened by the UN Environment Programme finance initiative but led by banks, encouraged members to slash the carbon footprint of their investments and help drive the transition to net zero emissions by 2050.
The group counted nearly 150 members at its peak but began losing members late last year, when Donald Trump was re-elected on promises to deregulate the energy sector, dismantle environmental rules and “drill, baby, drill”.
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Six major US banks – JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs – quit before Trump’s inauguration, in moves analysts said were an attempt to head off “anti-woke” attacks from rightwing US politicians.
They were followed by European and Japanese lenders. In July, HSBC became the first British bank to quit the alliance, followed weeks later by Barclays. HSBC had already delayed key parts of its climate goals by 20 years and watered down environmental targets.
The NZBA said its guidance and supporting documentation would “remain publicly available” and that “individual banks worldwide” could still use them. A spokesperson said no interviews would be offered “at this point”.
