Sharon Donnery: No time to wait - addressing climate risk in the financial system today

Remarks (virtual) by Sharon Donnery, Deputy Governor, Central Bank of Ireland and Member of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank, at the Climate Finance Week Ireland 2022, organised by Allied Irish Banks (AIB) and Sustainable Finance Ireland, Dublin, 18 October 2022. 

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Central bank speech  | 
28 October 2022

Introduction

Good morning everyone - it's great to be here with you at Climate Finance Week.  I'd like to thank the organisers for inviting me to speak here today and congratulate them on successfully organising this week-long event for the 5th year running.

Last week I attended the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings in Washington. The meetings provide an opportunity for global leaders, policy makers, the private sector and civil society to discuss issues of global concern. It won't surprise you that climate change was high on the agenda.  But the thing that resonated most with me over the course of the week was the sense of urgency conveyed by all who discussed the topic, the feeling that time is running out, that our window of opportunity is closing.  Indeed the IMF appealed to policymakers across the globe to urgently enact transformational reforms to address climate change.

The central theme of Climate Finance Week, "Investing in a Climate Resilient Future NOW", speaks to this urgency and the need for actions today to tackle the challenges and avail of opportunities presented by climate change. A big part of building a resilient future, of course, involves understanding and managing the risks that climate change poses today. This brings me to the topic of this session and to my remarks, in which I will address the issue of climate risks in the financial sector. I will also speak to the ongoing work by the Central Bank of Ireland and others on this topic.