SUSTAINABILITY
An Honest Conversation on Advancing Climate Action in the Finance Industry at LCAW
climate targets are ambitious, it is good – both for the environment and for business – to be a leader in sustainable development, and this gets easier with every passing year.
Banking on the transition If Allianz is approaching the climate crisis through the lens of risk, French bank BNP Paribas is framing it through transition finance. During the panel, Laurence says the bank made some“ bold oil and gas commitments” at the end of 2022 – something she calls“ a large step on journeys started more than 10 years ago,” stressing that BNP Paribas’ original objective had always been to finance the energy transition. That distinction matters, she says, because it places the bank’ s policy moves inside a longer strategic arc rather than presenting as reactive to ESG announcements.
The bank’ s current public climate data lays this out, with BNP Paribas stating that by the end of September 2025, low-carbon energy financing had reached € 38.3bn( US $ 43.6bn), including € 35.6bn( US $ 40.5bn) for renewables, while fossil-fuel energy production exposure stood at € 8.6bn( US $ 9.8bn). As a result, 82 % of its energy production credit exposure has been directed towards lowcarbon energy, with a target of 90 % before the end of the decade. For a commercial bank, that kind of shift is significant because it changes the revenue mix as well as the ongoing sustainability narrative.
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