Highlights from the Bank of England’s climate disclosure 2023 and transition plan

A short summary of these climate-related publications.
Published on 06 July 2023

The objective of the Bank of England’s work on climate change is to:

Play a leading role, through its policies and operations, in ensuring the financial system and the Bank itself are resilient to the risks from climate change and in understanding its macroeconomic implications. Where there is alignment with the Bank’s objectives and legal framework, it acts to support the transition to a net-zero emissions economy.

This contributes towards advancing the Bank’s statutory objectives of financial and monetary stability and centres on five key goals:

In 2022/23 the Bank’s five strategic goals were: 1 – ensuring the financial system is resilient to climate-related financial risks; 2 – supporting an orderly economy-wide transition to net-zero emissions; 3 – promoting adoption of effective TCFD-aligned climate disclosure; 4 – contributing to a co-ordinated international approach to climate change; and 5 – demonstrating best practice through our own operations.

In the past year we continued to make progress, including through:

Four adjacent columns describing progress as detailed in the accessible text below this image.
    • Enhancing resilience of the financial system and the safety and soundness of PRA-regulate firms via supervision against our climate expectations; exploration of the link between climate and regulatory capital; and publication of the Climate Biennial Exploratory Scenario exercise results.
    • Exploring the macroeconomic implications of climate change, including publication of a Quarterly Bulletin article that set out our latest thinking and by chairing the Network for Greening the Financial System workstream on monetary policy.
    • Promoting adoption of TCFD-aligned climate disclosure, supporting the International Sustainability Standards Board’s work to establish a global baseline for climate risk reporting and supporting the UK Transition Plan Taskforce’s development of a transition plan framework.
    • Collaborating with international partners and organisations to advance our collective understanding and make progress with a view to delivering the Bank’s mission.

We also continued to improve the resilience of our own operations:

  • physical operations: emissions down 37% vs 2021/22
  • financial operations: forward-looking, scenario-based analysis enhanced

And, for the first time, we set out our plan to reduce emissions from our physical operations to net zero by 2040:

Chart showing emissions trajectory from 2016 to 2040, with publication in 2023. Includes interim targets with a 40% reduction by 2025, 62% reduction by 2030, 84% reduction by 2035 and 90% reduction by 2040.