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Barclays, Morgan Stanley Lead Banks Into Milestone CO2 Deal

  • Banks face new reporting era as capital markets are targeted
  • NatWest among few banks agreeing to 100% disclosure standard
Exhaust plumes from cooling towers at a coal-fired power station.

Exhaust plumes from cooling towers at a coal-fired power station.

Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Updated on

A group of banks led by Barclays Plc and Morgan Stanley is working on a compromise deal to unlock a months-long stalemate that’s stalled efforts to calculate and disclose the carbon footprints of the industry’s capital-markets operations.

Any agreement would mark a milestone in climate finance. Assigning responsibility for so-called facilitated emissions — or those that are enabled through debt and equity underwriting — remains a divisive subject, which is the main reason climate accounting has so far focused on direct lending. But that’s about to change.