Banks say they’re meeting climate pledges. A new report says they’re ineffective

The biggest banks in the world have all pledged to go green.

A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link. The biggest banks in the world have pledged to go green. But a new study, published by the European Central Bank, has found that those promises often amount to more talk than walk. What’s happening: Just over two years ago, the world’s largest lenders and asset managers gathered in Glasgow and pledged to spend a collective $130 trillion (that’s nearly five times larger than the US economy) to tackle climate change. What emerged was the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) – now made up of 675 financial powerhouses spanning 50 countries. “We now have the essential plumbing in place to move climate change from the fringes to the forefront of finance so that every financial decision takes climate change into account,” Mark Carney, the alliance co-chair, UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and former head of the Bank of England, said in a statement at the time. The financial institutions voluntarily pledged to make sure that the companies they invested in slashed their emissions. They also said they would align their lending policies with the goal of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5°C from pre-industrial levels. But a new report that analyzed lending by some European signatories, published by economists from the ECB, MIT and Columbia Business School, casts doubts on whether the promises had made any substantive changes.