Today’s newsletter looks at UK financial institutions’ efforts to ramp up green funding as investors push for more detailed snapshots of how banks are helping finance the clean energy transition. For unlimited access to climate and energy news, please subscribe. 

Banks Face Pressure to Fund Clean Power

By Alastair Marsh

As UK politicians of all stripes push back on the feasibility of racing toward a low-carbon future, investors in the country’s biggest banks refuse to lose sight of that goal.

A group of 31 shareholders in Barclays Plc overseeing a combined £1.36 trillion ($1.82 trillion) in assets are using the bank’s annual general meeting on Wednesday to call on the board to set an explicit funding target for the renewable energy sector. On Thursday, an investor coalition will ask Standard Chartered Plc to step up capital allocations to clean energy in emerging economies. And last week, a group of HSBC Holdings Plc shareholders urged Europe’s biggest bank to reaffirm its commitment to net zero.

The UK has, under successive governments, pitched itself as a climate leader, and the current administration under Prime Minister Keir Starmer is no exception. Yet the economic sense of pursuing net zero policies is being increasingly challenged in Britain, with the conservative opposition arguing that a significant expansion in renewable energy, a phaseout of petrol cars and the replacement of gas boilers with heat pumps will raise costs for households.

For financial firms, the political mood is critical in setting corporate priorities. The concept of net zero finance has faced more resistance than ever since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, sending ripples throughout the global economy. 

In the run-up to COP26, UK banks committed to eliminate financed emissions by 2050 and to channel hundreds of billions of pounds into companies supporting the low-carbon transition. Barclays, for example, has a target to facilitate $1 trillion of sustainable and transition financing between 2023 and the end of 2030.

But on Wednesday, the lender will come under pressure to publish a more detailed methodology, as a representative for ShareAction asks it to explain “exactly how it has quantified its sustainable finance targets,” according to the London-based nonprofit, which will be speaking on behalf of a group of investors that includes AkademikerPension, Church of England Pensions Board and Rathbones Group. The shareholders will also request that Barclays set a specific target for the renewable power sector.

At StanChart’s AGM on Thursday, investors will make the case that the bank could have “an outsized impact” on helping lower the cost of capital for clean technologies in emerging economies, given its large exposure and deep relationships in those markets.

A spokesperson for StanChart said sustainability is a “clear strategic focus,” which is reinforced by the bank’s net zero financed emissions commitment, in an emailed comment. A spokesperson for Barclays declined to comment. At its AGM on Friday, HSBC Chief Executive Officer Georges Elhedery said the bank remains committed to net zero.

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Europe’s leaders are seeing an opportunity to become the world’s top destination for research amid a string of funding freezes, canceled programs and general hostility toward science in the US under President Donald Trump — but attracting top talent won’t be easy. 

Earlier this week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen launched a €500 million ($566.4 million) incentives package for 2025 to 2027 aimed at making Europe a “magnet for researchers,” at an event hosted by France’s Emmanuel Macron. The French president unveiled a further €100 million aimed at high-tech innovators. 

“This is an historic opportunity for Europe and the UK to overtake the US permanently as the number one destination for the world’s scientists,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in London. “If the UK and Europe won’t do it, China and other countries will also recognize the opportunity.”

But there’s a myriad of reasons why US-based researchers may not be so quick to pack up and move abroad. For one, the salaries will likely be far less than those available in the US. For another, researchers often don’t do work alone, meaning they would have to weigh what moving might mean for students, lab mates and others left behind. And, then there’s also the question of how moving abroad would impact their families and personal lives.

Spain is showing how newly beefed up military budgets could help fight the growing climate crisis as Europe races to ramp up defense spending in support of Ukraine. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said 17% of this years military spending will go toward natural disaster relief.

The White House’s effort to scrub government websites of environmental data has researchers and activists trying to recreate several lost mapping tools to protect communities vulnerable to pollution and climate change.

Republicans in the US House are more likely than not to kill a consumer tax credit for electric vehicles, Speaker Mike Johnson said. The credit has been a prime target for Republicans looking for ways to help pay for tax cuts. 

Last week Canadians elected Mark Carney, leader of the Liberal Party, to be their prime minister. Carney is a newcomer to politics, but is well known in international finance and climate circles, running both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, and founding the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. Canada is far from reaching its legally mandated goal to achieve net zero by 2050, and has one of the highest emissions per capita of anywhere in the world. Now Carney has been elected, can he translate his international climate leadership into domestic policy, or will climate fall by the wayside as he fortifies Canada against a trade war with the US?

Bloomberg Green senior reporter and former Toronto Bureau Chief, Danielle Bochove, joins Zero to discuss. Listen now, and subscribe on Apple,  Spotify, or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.

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