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Dave McKay, chief executive of Royal Bank of Canada, speaks during an event at the Canadian Club in Toronto, Ont.Photo by Galit Rodan/Bloomberg files
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Royal Bank of Canada has followed the rest of the country’s biggest lenders in quitting a global climate alliance that supports the energy transition away from fossil fuels.
Canada’s biggest bank on Friday joined Toronto-Dominion Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada and a host of big banks in the United States to withdraw from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which tries to align lending, investment and capital markets activity with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
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“We have informed the NZBA that we will be departing the organization, as we now have the tools and capabilities to help implement our climate strategy and measure our performance,” an RBC spokesman said in a statement on Friday.
“We will continue to focus our efforts on supporting our clients to help them address climate change and succeed in the transition to a low-carbon and resilient economy.”
The departure of the biggest banks in the U.S. and Canada comes as U.S. President Donald Trump focuses more on promoting fossil fuel-based energy while weakening Joe Biden’s push to gradually transition to clean sources of energy.
But the Big Six banks all said they are committed to their respective climate transition plans.
RBC chief executive Dave McKay at a recent conference said that pulling out of the alliance “hypothetically, doesn’t lead to non-commitment” to net-zero goals.
“It just means that mechanism, that organization that fostered oversight and policies and rules around what you can and can’t do and how you report, is maybe not the right mechanism to do it,” he said.
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Members of the alliance, a subgroup of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), are required to transition their lending and investment portfolios to align with the pathways to net zero by 2050 or sooner and also set a 2030 target for greenhouse gas emissions.
Mark Carney, who is running to become the next leader of the Liberal Party, was co-chair of GFANZ, but resigned earlier this month.
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