Climate Finance Day 2018 – Paris, 28 November 2018 The role of finance: Anticipating climate risks, financing transition opportunities  Closing session: Speech by François Villeroy de Galhau Governor of the Banque de France  Press contact: Mark Deen (mark.deen@banque-france.fr). Page 1 sur 6 Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great pleasure to be here to conclude this fourth edition of Climate Finance Day. This event gives a concrete picture of what I like to call the “powerful coalition of the willing”. Each and every one of us – public authorities; academics, NGO’s and think tanks; corporates and financial institutions – have a part to play in this coalition. It is a shared challenge that no one can tackle alone, and you have worked during these last three days to bring tangible solutions to quickly and effectively finance the transition. Paris, chère Madame la Maire, has been a driving force committed to translating momentum into concrete action. Let me mention three key milestones: the COP 21 back in 2015, the “One Planet Summit” in December 2017, and this fourth edition of Climate Finance Day. To better address concretely the financial risks stemming from climate change, the Banque de France initiated a Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) at the One Planet Summit, with eight founding members. i In less than one year, we have been joined by 13 other members ii and five observers iii from the five continents. They work together with great energy and enthusiasm.
The NGFS will not stop there and next year will publish its first comprehensive report, which will provide – on a voluntary basis only – policy recommendations for central banks and supervisors. This will take place at the upcoming NGFS Conference, at the Banque de France in Paris, on 17 April 2019: you are all most welcome! To prevent the airplane from crashing, we can help by shedding light on climate risks in order to take accurate and timely decisions, and by seizing opportunities while aligning incentives and mobilising capital. II. Anticipating climate-related risks 1/ Our first priority should be the disclosure of existing exposures in the financial sector, what I call “the snapshot of risks”. The recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), chaired by Mr. Bloomberg with sponsorship from the Financial Stability Board (FSB), have been groundbreaking as they provide a practical framework allowing companies to disclose their climate-related financial risks. However, an accurate and consistent vision of the risks requires a wider implementation of the TCFD’s recommendations. Significant room for progress remains in this area. To enable markets to price risks, we need comparable metrics – thanks to a common taxonomy – and better access to higher quality and more consistent data. I therefore fully  Page 3 sur 6 support the work of the Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance of the European Commission which is concretely developing a taxonomy; our first NGFS workstream is also working in this field.