The Federal Reserve has created a new climate committee to address the risks climate change poses to financial stability.
The new effort, called the Financial Stability Climate Committee, will draw from expertise across the Federal Reserve system and is intended to tackle risks to the broader financial system, said Lael Brainard, a member of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors. She announced the new committee during remarks Tuesday at a virtual conference hosted by the sustainable investment group Ceres.
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The committee comes in addition to the Fed’s creation of a separate climate initiative earlier this year, the Supervision Climate Committee, that is focusing more closely on ensuring individual financial firms that the Fed oversees are prepared for climate-related risks.
The new committee will be focused on not just assessing potential climate shocks “but also whether climate change might make the financial system more vulnerable in ways that could amplify these shocks and cause broader knock-on effects that could harm households, businesses, and communities,” Brainard said.
She added it is critical for the Fed to address climate-related financial risks on both fronts because addressing the risks individual firms face may only shift that risk to another party and not eliminate the risk altogether.
Brainard also highlighted the need for transparency among participants in the financial system about the risks they are facing from climate change and policies to curb emissions. Without that transparency, climate-related risks could “build up in hidden pockets, embedding vulnerabilities that could result in cascading losses in the event of large-scale adverse weather outcomes or other shocks to asset valuations,” she added.
The Fed, along with other financial regulators, has been taking a number of steps recently to build up the capacity to address climate change. Late last year, the Fed formally joined a network of global banks working on climate change.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have both also launched their own efforts on climate change in recent months. The SEC took a first step last week toward likely requiring public companies to disclose the risks they face from climate change and emissions reduction policies.
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The recent climate efforts, however, have been met with pushback from Republican lawmakers. In particular, they say addressing climate change risks is outside the bounds of the Fed’s jurisdiction. GOP lawmakers also argue implementing climate scenario analysis, as Brainard has suggested the board is working on, would put pressure on banks and other financial firms to decline to invest further in fossil fuel producers.
