 Banks’ Climate Commitments and Credit to Carbon-Intensive Industries: New Evidence for FrancePost-Print from HAL Abstract: I investigate whether and how banks align green words, in terms of their commitments to tackle climate change, with deeds in terms of credit allocation across carbon-intensive industries in France. I use data on bank credit exposures to large versus small firms across 49 industries for the main banking groups operating in France, which I merge with information on industries' greenhouse gas emission intensities and a score for banks' self-reported climate-related commitments over 2010–2017. I find evidence that higher levels of self-reported climate commitments by banks are associated with a slower growth of lending to large firms in the five most carbon-intensive industries. However, lending to small and medium-sized enterprises across more or less carbon-intensive industries remains unrelated to banks' commitments to green their business. These findings suggest that devising an appropriate carbon reporting framework for small firms is likely to enhance the decarbonization of bank lending. Keywords: Banks' climate policies; credit; carbon-intensity; climate change; climate risk management; sustainable finance (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Climate Policy, 2022, 22 (3), pp.1-12. ⟨10.1080/14693062.2021.2012121⟩ There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03560981 DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2021.2012121 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
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