By Virginia Furness and Simon Jessop
LONDON (Reuters) -Barclays made 500 million pounds ($666.20 million) in revenue from sustainable and low-carbon transition finance in 2024 and is looking to expand its climate planning efforts with clients, its sustainability chief told Reuters on Tuesday. The bank said it would stick to its net-zero emissions by mid-century target – despite U.S. political backlash against climate-related initiatives – but that the pace of change in the real economy was being tested by diverging policy approaches, continued dependence on conventional energy in many economies and other factors. In the first major update on its strategy since 2020, Daniel Hanna, group head of sustainable and transition finance, said Barclays remained committed to the transition because it delivered a strong commercial opportunity for the bank. “This is something that we’re doing not just because it’s important to our clients, but also because it’s an opportunity that we think we are well positioned to capture on behalf of our shareholders, as well as being a risk to manage,” he said. Hanna said lending to customers using sustainable products also generated higher-than-average returns for the bank. Barclays’ profits rose by a better-than-expected 23% in the first half of this year, driven largely by its investment banking unit, it said on Tuesday. The bank set a target of $1 trillion in lending for sustainable and transition-related finance by 2030 and has facilitated over a quarter of a trillion dollars in sustainable and transition finance since 2020. It had also deployed 239 million pounds of equity to nascent technologies needed to help the world reach its climate goals. “There’s a huge opportunity to scale climate tech,” Hanna said. “It provides new growth areas, it creates jobs, but it is also quite challenging.” Already liaising with clients across a range of sectors, the bank would expand coverage of its climate transition framework to listed companies in the commercial real estate and mining industries and look to incorporate broader nature and social factors, Hanna said. The bank uses the framework to better understand how its clients plan to transition to a lower carbon future and to offer guidance and financing then help them meet those goals, Hanna said. “It is both an engagement tool, a way of spotting opportunities, and then a way for identifying where our portfolios are heading as well,” he said. “Over the last few years, we’ve really deepened our understanding [of the transition].”
($1 = 0.7505 pounds)
(Reporting by Simon JessopEditing by Alexandra Hudson)
