On Thursday, October 10, 2019, the WiseEuropa Foundation along with ING Bank Śląski organized a meeting: Climate change and business – the round table for representatives of the banking sector. The event was attended by representatives of the Polish banking sector and partners of the meeting Foundation RT-ON, WWF and financial think-tank Carbon Tracker.
The meeting was opened by Joanna Erdman, vice-president of the ING Bank Śląski management board, Kazimierz Rajczyk, Sector Managing Director of ING Bank Śląski and Maciej Bukowski, president of the WiseEuropa Foundation and a member of the Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance – TEG. The meeting was related to three topics:
- Regulations – how actions at the European level of sustainable finance shuffle Polish stakeholders;
- Global technology trends and regulations and their impacts on the profitability and future of the Polish energy sector;
- Available tools enabling analysis and adjustment a bank wallet to the goal of climate neutrality in 2050.
After the presentation of each topic, the participants have discussed the challenges and opportunities related to the involvement of the banking sector in the process of low-carbon economy transformation. The sector representatives shared their foregoing experiences, presenting which actions have been already taken or will be taken in the near future through specific banks. WiseEuropa, as an active member of the Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance created by the European Commission, aims at building a systematic and long-term dialogue with a financial environment. A topic of sustainable finance requires a broader discussion at the national level – while the debate about the sustainable finance has been already started in Poland, the scale of challenges and necessity to redirect financial flows forwarding to support low-carbon investments requires its significant intensification.