HSBC：Innovative Solutions to Addressing Climate Change
Noel Quinn
Group Chief Executive, HSBC
Executive Summary
The financial services sector will play a leading and pivotal role in the global transition to net zero. As facilitators and providers of financing to businesses of all sizes and in all sectors, we can help entire industries to retool, evolve their business models and replace old technologies with greener, cleaner alternatives.
Leading from the front on climate is a major opportunity for all banks. The pressure on businesses to change from investors, customers, employees and society is growing – and many also actively want to change themselves to safeguard their futures. As provision of sustainable finance expands, so will the returns it can offer its participants.
In recent years, China has clearly signalled its climate intentions in this area. It became the first major country outside of Europe to set a net zero goal in 2021. It has made important advances in areas like renewable power generation, battery development, electric vehicle construction and smart grids, and has been leading the world in investing in and deploying these technologies for well over a decade. Its commitment to reach net zero by 2060, and peak carbon by 2030, are clear signposts for international and domestic businesses to work towards.
In this paper, we have sought to use our experience to give some insight into the broad range of steps it takes to create innovation solutions to the climate challenges we face, specifically in terms of ways we can:
1. Embed firm-level climate transition plans across the economy – pushing all companies to have decarbonisation strategies, and helping banks provide the capital required to implement these urgently.
2. Mobilise transition finance in emerging markets – introducing new ‘blended finance’ options to boost the proportion of climate-related finance going to emerging markets, which account for nearly half of total greenhouse gas emissions.
3. Deploy sustainable infrastructure more widely – rolling out new labelling, strengthening project pipelines, and developing the financial ecosystem to start closing the trillion-dollar sustainable infrastructure investment gap.
4. Rapidly scale climate technologies – supporting ‘ready to scale now’ technologies and those not yet commercially viable through innovative public-private / private-philanthropic partnerships.We believe that these financial solutions coupled with China’s ability to quickly deploy and scale climate technologies, as well as its long-standing partnerships in the developing world, will prove an effective weapon to fight climate change – especially as we need to act quickly in this decade.
The growing sophistication of China’s financial markets means that it can play a leading role in working with international partners to address the challenges laid out in this report. I look forward to discussing how it can do so in more detail at the 2023 China Development Forum.
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