Climate
Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero restructuring follows US bank exits
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January 8, 2025

A key alliance of global financial firms, established at COP26 in Glasgow, is restructuring to focus on tackling barriers to mobilising climate finance.
The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) said it was pivoting its efforts towards closing the $5 trillion a year investment gap in the finance necessary for the world to transition its energy systems towards low-carbon production.
The announcement comes after several high-profile departures from the alliance by major US banks since Donald Trump was re-elected president in November. Most recently, Morgan Stanley resigned last week from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), an affiliate organisation to GFANZ. This followed the departures of Goldman Sachs, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo in December.
Membership of the NZBA was targeted by attorneys-general in multiple states, including Texas and Arizona, in civil investigative demands sent to the five banks named above and JPMorgan in 2022.
Carbon credits and public-private finance
GFANZ said it would shift its focus to mobilising finance through public-private partnerships, including Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) in Brazil, Indonesia and Vietnam. This would “ensure” its members could “bring finance to the table” alongside governments and multilateral development banks.
“GFANZ will build on its work to support the Industrial Transition Accelerator and the scaling of high-integrity voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) by engaging with governments and regulators to help remove regulatory barriers to private sector investment and develop enabling policy environments,” the alliance said in a statement.
An agreement reached at COP29 in Azerbaijan in November is widely expected to reverse the decline in VCMs in recent years, which has followed a number of high-profile frauds. Most notably, in October the US Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) charged Kenneth Newcombe, former CEO of C-Quest Capital and a high-profile figure in the carbon markets, with fraud.
Membership broadened
The GFANZ restructure announcement followed a December 31 statement from co-chairs Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England; Michael Bloomberg, founder of the eponymous financial data company; and vice chair Mary Schapiro, former chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Their statement also flagged up a change in the membership criteria for GFANZ.
“GFANZ going forward will allow any financial institution working to mobilise capital and lower barriers to financing energy transition to participate,” the trio said. Previously, financial firms had to commit to being aligned with net zero emissions by 2050 to become members.
Achievements
GFANZ attributed its change of focus to the success of its actions to improve data quality around carbon emissions and to increase the use of transition plans by financial institutions.
Bloomberg led the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), whose reporting framework was subsequently adopted into the International Sustainability Standards Board’s (ISSB) S2 Standard. ISSB standards have now been adopted, or are in train for adoption, by countries accounting for 55% of global GDP.
GFANZ also pioneered transition plans. Several countries including the EU and the UK have built on the GFANZ templates when announcing their plans for mandatory corporate transition plans. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the countryʼs central bank, also drew on the templates when it set out guidelines for financial institutions reporting on their planning for net zero in 2023.