Finance
Central Banks Have a $12 Billion Coal Problem They Must Solve
- Think tank highlights financial-stability risks from fossil
- Coal-related bonds should be excluded from QE, collateral
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The world’s leading central banks should purge coal-related assets from their balance sheets and set rules discouraging the financial system from financing polluting industries, according to the New Economics Foundation.
A report by the London-based think tank estimates central banks in the euro area, the U.K., the U.S., Japan, China and Switzerland own more than $12 billion in bonds and stocks exposed to coal. That figure assumes the share of brown assets in those institution’s holdings is roughly equivalent to that in the Swiss National Bank’s U.S. equity portfolio -- the only publicly available data on private-sector investments by a central bank.