By Pete Schroeder
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A top U.S. regulatory panel is scheduled on Thursday to unveil recommendations for ensuring the financial system can withstand risks created by climate change, a development that could ultimately lead to new rules and stricter oversight for Wall Street.
The report by the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), which comprises the heads of the top financial agencies and is chaired by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, is part of President Joe Biden’s plan to aggressively tackle climate change and will be released ahead of his trip to Glasgow, Scotland, for a United Nations climate summit.
While the report is unlikely to mandate specific rule changes, it is expected to provide a roadmap for integrating climate risk management into the everyday fabric of the financial regulatory system.
With Biden’s climate agenda stalling in a divided Congress, the report will also send a signal to the rest of the world that the United States is serious about tackling systemic climate risks.
“This is the first time that all of the banking and financial regulators will come out in one document and talk about what they can do on climate change,” said Todd Phillips, director of financial regulation at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank.
“This document, I think, will be a framework for how they will move forward,” Phillips said.
Climate change could upend the financial system because physical threats such as rising sea levels, as well as policies and carbon-neutral technologies aimed at slowing global warming, could destroy trillions of dollars of assets, risk experts say.
In a 2020 report, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) cited data estimating that $1 trillion to $4 trillion of global wealth tied to fossil fuel assets could ultimately be lost. With a record $51 billion pouring into U.S. sustainable funds in 2020, investors are also pushing for better information on the risks companies face from climate change.
U.S. regulators, however, did almost nothing under Republican former President Donald Trump to tackle climate risks, and the United States badly lags its peers on the issue.
Biden, a Democrat, has said he wants every government agency to begin incorporating climate risk into their agenda, and last week the White House published its own report outlining how financial agencies are responding.
“Climate risks are real risks for the profitability of companies, their shareholders, and their work forces. I expect the FSOC will identify those risks in some detail,” Jane Montgomery, an environmental partner at law firm Schiff Hardin, said in an email.
“The business community is looking for specific direction on the types of disclosures they must make, the data specificity needed to back up those disclosures, and the risk analysis needed to support the disclosures.”
(Reporting by Pete Schroeder; Editing by Michelle Price, Leslie Adler and Paul Simao)
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