Wednesday 5 February 2020

City of London ‘is open for carbon-neutral, green business’

The City of London is open for carbon-neutral, green business.

That's the suggestion from Shravan Joshi, Elected Member of the City of London, who spoke to Sumit Bose, Co-Founder of future Net Zero, about both the local authority and the wider financial district's net zero ambitions.

He said the city sees the global shift towards decarbonisation as an area of growth, noting London has "become the centre of green finance globally" - green finance refers to financial instruments or solutions that feature an environmental aspect, such as green bonds used fund the construction of a renewable energy facility.

Mr Joshi added: "There's a misconception that the banking sector or the City is not green, I think it is very much is green.

"I think actually the financial services sector to my mind is driving a lot of those projects and a lot of that technology through."

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He also stressed the importance of technology, finance and policy mechanisms needing to be "married" together and working completely "in sync" to adequately de-risk a project and ensure it can be brought to fruition - he emphasised this would prove vital in allowing innovation to succeed and enabling funding to be channelled into research and development.

Stating the financial sector is already primed to take advantage of the shift towards greener business models, Mr Joshi also acknowledged the government must "drive change across the board" and ensure the necessary financial safeguards are in place if the economics opportunities available are to be maximised.

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With regards to the City of London's own future, he said an ongoing climate action plan has been launched - it is currently in the stage of gathering data to fully understand which infrastructure, processes and behaviour are driving the bulk of its carbon footprint.

He told future Net Zero this was required before a concrete timeframe for net zero could be put into place, adding: "We don't see this as a fixed-term plan, we see it as an ongoing behavioural change."