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Mark Carney, former head of the Bank of England, second from right, and other finance officials at a panel discussion on Wednesday in Glasgow.Credit...Daniel Leal-Olivas/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

GLASGOW — Some of the world’s biggest financial institutions on Wednesday vowed to mobilize trillions of dollars to help shift the global economy toward cleaner energy as negotiators at the United Nations climate summit struggled with the question of how to pay for the enormous costs of climate change.

A coalition of banks, investors and insurers that collectively control $130 trillion in assets said it would commit to reaching net-zero emissions across its portfolio by 2050. It was essentially a pledge to make climate change a central focus of major financial decisions for decades to come.

“We now have the essential plumbing in place to move climate change from the fringes to the forefront of finance so that every financial decision takes climate change into account,” said Mark Carney, the former head of the Bank of England, who is leading the coalition, along with billionaire and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.

That pledge was met with skepticism from environmentalists, though, who noted that the details were vague and that many banks still invest hundreds of billions each year in fossil fuels.

“Either they stop financing fossil expansion, or their net-zero commitments are greenwash,” said Jason Opeña Disterhoft, senior climate and energy campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, an environmental group.

Money has long been a big sticking point in the global fight against climate change, and tensions over the issue have flared again at the Glasgow summit convened by the United Nations.

A decade ago, the world’s wealthiest countries pledged $100 billion per year in climate aid by 2020 to help poorer countries make the transition to cleaner energy and protect themselves against the growing dangers from heat waves, floods, droughts and wildfires as the planet warms.

So far, those promises have not been met.

By one estimate, wealthy countries are still falling short by tens of billions of dollars per year. And critics have said that even the money that has been paid has been poorly targeted. A large fraction of aid to date has been handed out as loans, which developing countries often struggle to repay. And only a tiny sliver of financing has gone toward efforts to adapt to climate change.

“Our countries are the least liable for the damage to the world’s environment, but we pay the highest price,” said Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Barbuda and Antigua, which has struggled to rebuild after a Category 5 hurricane hit the country in 2017.

Separately, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the United States would support a financing mechanism that aims to direct $500 million a year to move developing countries away from coal-based energy and toward wind, solar and other low- and zero-carbon energy sources.

But she noted that the real cost of climate change would most likely run to the trillions of dollars.

“I agree we all must do more, and the United States is stepping up,” Ms. Yellen said. But, she added, “the gap between what governments have and what the world needs is large, and the private sector needs to play a bigger role.”

To that end, a group of philanthropic foundations and international development banks also announced a $10.5 billion fund to help emerging economies with growing energy needs make the switch from fossil fuels to renewable sources.

The group, known as the Global Energy Alliance, aims to draw in more donors in the coming weeks. At the moment, it has pulled in $1.5 billion from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ikea Foundation and the Bezos Earth Fund, along with $9 billion from development banks such as the African Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation.

The alliance says it aims to raise $100 billion in public and private capital to expand access to clean sources of electricity for a billion people in developing countries.

The climate summit is scheduled to run through Nov. 12.

A coalition of 18 countries, plus dozens of banks and other institutions, will pledge to phase out coal-fired power plants domestically and to end funding for international coal projects, according to the British government, which struck the deal at a global climate summit.

The burning of coal is the single greatest contributor to climate change, and ending support for it is a major issue at the United Nations climate change conference.

The new campaign, which is expected to be announced by British officials on Thursday in Glasgow, declares that the end of coal “is in sight” because of the new coalition. The full list of 18 countries was not available, but according to the British government it includes developed and developing countries like Poland, Vietnam, Egypt, Chile and Morocco.

It was unclear whether the United States was part of the agreement. A spokeswoman for John Kerry, President Biden’s climate envoy, did not respond to a request for comment.

The World Coal Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the new announcement but earlier this week said efforts to eliminate coal ignored the fact that coal “remains a critical to energy supply in 80 countries and the livelihood of more than 790 million people who have no access to reliable and affordable power.”

The 190 countries and organizations that make up the new coalition will commit to ending all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally. The time frame was not immediately clear.

They will also agree to make a “just transition away from coal power in a way that benefits workers and communities” and to rapidly scale up the deployment of clean energy like wind and solar power.

“Phasing out coal is essential to reach our climate targets,” Svenja Schulze, Germany’s minister of the environment, said in a statement. “In the near future we will have left behind all fossil fuels and live in a new and sustainable energy world based on renewable energy.”

Michael Bloomberg, who said this week that he would ramp up his American and European campaigns to phase out coal and move into 25 other countries, said in a statement that he believed tackling climate change “depends on ending coal-fired power.”

HSBC and Export Development Canada plan to join the group as well, according to the statement.

Leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies met in Rome before the climate conference and agreed to eliminate financing for coal plants overseas. They stopped short, though, of pledging to end coal at home because of objections from China, India, Australia and Russia.

A group of philanthropic foundations and international development banks on Wednesday announced a $10.5 billion fund to help emerging economies with growing energy needs make the switch from fossil fuels to renewable sources.

The group, known as the Global Energy Alliance, aims to draw in more donors in the coming weeks. At the moment, it has pulled in $1.5 billion from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ikea Foundation and the Bezos Earth Fund, along with $9 billion from international development banks such as the African Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation.

The announcement, on the sidelines of the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, comes as the Biden administration is banking on trillions of dollars in private investment to move global energy systems away from coal, oil and gas.

Raj Shah, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, which helped set up the alliance, said that the new fund was necessary to jump-start investments in clean energy technologies that would not otherwise draw private investors that demand high rates of return.

“Accelerating climate transitions in developing countries will not happen if an immediate 20 percent return on every investment is necessary,” Mr. Shah said, adding that such an initiative would require public, philanthropic and private sectors coming together to “leverage innovative finance.”

The alliance says it aims to raise $100 billion in public and private capital to expand access to clean sources of electricity for a billion people in developing countries, create 150 million jobs and avoid the carbon emissions that would have been generated by power plants that run on coal.

The money will support initiatives such as the development of mini-electricity grids in parts of rural India, help Indonesia shut down some of its oldest and most polluting coal-fired power plants, and develop a hydropower project in Sierra Leone.

Logistical complaints are mounting at the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, where participants waiting in security lines for more than an hour were abruptly told on Wednesday afternoon that there was no room for them inside the venue.

At 12:15 p.m., conference organizers issued an alert notifying people that the 10,000-person capacity limit in the cavernous tented area where the summit is being held was close to being reached. Instead, they suggested, participants who could do so should watch the proceedings online.

It was the last straw for many attendees, especially environmentalists and delegates from developing countries who endured long journeys and logistical hurdles to get to Glasgow during the pandemic. The past few days, the conference limited the number of people allowed inside the venue from civil society groups. The online portals to watch the negotiations remotely have been faulty.

On Tuesday, conference organizers issued a letter of apology to participants for the long lines and video difficulties, saying that planning around Covid restrictions has been challenging. On Wednesday afternoon, Patricia Espinosa, the executive secretary of the U.N. climate body, asked attendees to “bear with us” as organizers grappled with the complex arrangements — which include ensuring that all those entering the venue have tested negative for the coronavirus, and enforcing controls on the number of people in meeting rooms.

“This is a unique COP in quite extraordinary times,” added Alok Sharma, the British politician who is serving as host of the conference. He said organizers are “working to fix” logistical issues but did not offer details.

They also did not address criticisms over issuing accreditation for 39,509 people to access a venue whose the capacity is limited to 10,000.

One veteran of the annual summit — known as COP26 because it is the 26th “conference of the parties” to the U.N.’s climate body — called it the “poorest planed” to date. Alexandria Villaseñor, a youth activist from the United States, called the conference a “hellscape.”

“An exclusionary, racist, ableist, classist environment directly informs the decision making process that is placed in it!” Ms. Villaseñor wrote on Twitter.

Asad Rehman, director of a coalition of labor, youth, racial justice and other groups focused on climate change, derided the “shabbiest organizing” he’s seen in 15 years of attending U.N. climate conferences. He said that some negotiators told him they had to cancel bilateral meetings because they were unable to get inside in time.

“There’s mounting anger about this issue of accessibility and inclusion, and huge, huge frustration not just from developing countries but also negotiators,” Mr. Rehman said. “It’s probably the poorest planned COP I’ve ever seen.”

One of the challenges in holding companies and countries accountable for their roles in global warming is how greenhouse gas emission data has been self-reported, former Vice President Al Gore said Wednesday on the sidelines of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

“There’s an old cliché that I’m sure you’ve heard a million times: that you can only manage what you can measure,” Mr. Gore said, speaking at the Climate Hub, a Times event series running alongside the conference.

But, he said, advances in satellite and computer analysis have enabled information about emissions to be tracked independently and in real time, helping scientists assign responsibility for emissions to specific industries, companies and regions.

“That changes everything,” he said.

Mr. Gore’s Climate Trace coalition, which began last year, issued its first report on greenhouse gas emissions in September. It was the culmination of a study that analyzed data from more than 300 satellites.

“We now have the emissions, for the last five years, for every large source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet,” said Mr. Gore, whose film about climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won the 2007 Academy Award for best documentary. “By next year, we will have that down to such a granular level that we will be able to report monthly, weekly and in a few cases daily totals from every single significant machine source everywhere in the world.”

Mr. Gore said he wanted to focus on the potential for new technology to help make greenhouse gas emission reporting more transparent, more timely and more accurate. At past climate conferences, he said, the discussion was based on outdated data. There are 100 countries that don’t have any emissions data that is more recent than five or even 20 years old, he said.

As delegates inside the COP26 conference hall in Glasgow heard promises of new private-sector funding for climate change, protesters marched in the city on Wednesday in opposition to “greenwashing” — when companies claim to be protecting the environment while continuing to harm it.

Several hundred protesters, holding signs that read “Act now!” and “Stop Funding Fossil Fuels,” gathered outside a shopping mall to demand that companies take more substantial steps.

“For us, there’s very little hope,” said Akke Houtsoma, 20, an administrative worker who had traveled from the Netherlands to attend protests outside the climate conference. “I feel the most anxiety not about my future, but for the people right now who are suffering.”

A focus of the climate conference on Wednesday has been on how to pay for a global shift to cleaner energy sources. Even as a group of the world’s biggest investors, banks and insurers vowed to commit their more than $130 trillion in assets to pursuing climate goals, protesters were doubtful that the promises would be fulfilled.

“The promises coming out are quite good, but they are still just promises,” said Marilyn Spurr, 74, a retired high school teacher from Devon, England, who is a member of Extinction Rebellion, a British-based activist group. “If they step up to the mark, good for them, but so far we haven’t seen a lot of it.”

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Protesters in Glasgow Condemn Corporate ‘Greenwashing’

As the COP26 climate summit shifted its focus to funding, protesters demanded greater accountability from corporations and called out “greenwashing.”

“What do we want?” “Climate justice.” “When do we want it?” “Now.” “Are we going to fight for it?” “I did the travel from Reunion Island because I think it’s important that the voice of the youth of Reunion Island has to be heard by the politicians because there is a big emergency on our islands for their impact by climate change. And today I’m here with XR to protest about that protest, about greenwashing. That is actually a big problem on the COP26. We want real actions.” “Who are you going to call?” “Greenwashbusters.” “Who are you going to call?” “Greenwashbusters.” “We’re a group of activists from Bristol, and we call ourselves the Greenwashbusters. We’re up here at COP26 because we know that there’s governments and companies that profess to be, you know, doing things to save the planet when actually they’re doing exactly the opposite, you know, funding deforestation and extraction of fossil fuels. And it’s the hypocrisy that we are here to call out.”

Activists said there needed to be stronger ways to hold companies to account for their promises, many of which never materialize. Of at least $1.1 trillion that private equity firms have invested in the energy sector since 2010, most went toward fossil fuels, according to data from Pitchbook, a company that tracks investment, and an analysis by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a nonprofit that pushes for more disclosure about private equity deals.

Protests planned for Friday and Saturday in Glasgow are expected to draw tens of thousands. A youth-led strike organized by Fridays for Future, the international movement that has grown out of Greta Thunberg’s solo strike in 2018 in Sweden, will see thousands march from Kelvingrove Park to George’s Square.

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U.S. Backs Effort to Lower Carbon Output From Developing Countries

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said the United States would contribute to an international financing mechanism that aims to direct $500 million a year to help transition developing countries from coal based energy toward low- and zero-carbon energy sources.

Glasgow and COP26 is a pivotal moment at the start of this decisive decade of climate action. The climate crisis is already here. This is not a challenge for future generations, but one we must confront today. Rising to this challenge will require the wholesale transformation of our carbon intensive economies. I agree we must all do more. And the United States is stepping up. President Biden has already announced that we’re quadrupling our international climate finance for developing countries by 2024 to more than $11 billion. This morning, as part of our continued efforts, I’m pleased to join the U.K. in announcing that the United States also intends to fully support the climate investment funds capital markets mechanism.

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said the United States would contribute to an international financing mechanism that aims to direct $500 million a year to help transition developing countries from coal based energy toward low- and zero-carbon energy sources.CreditCredit...Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Wednesday that the United States would support a financing mechanism that aims to direct $500 million a year to move developing countries away from coal-based energy and toward wind, solar and other low- and zero-carbon energy sources.

Speaking at the United Nations climate talks in Glasgow, Ms. Yellen acknowledged that while wealthy countries have promised billions of dollars to tackle climate change, the real cost is in the trillions.

“I agree we all must do more, and the United States is stepping up,” Ms. Yellen said. But, she added, “the gap between what governments have and what the world needs is large, and the private sector needs to play a bigger role.”

Financing for climate change initiatives remains an enormous point of tension at the U.N. talks. Wealthy countries have not met a promise they made more than a decade ago to raise $100 billion annually by 2020 to help poor countries — which have contributed the least to climate change but are suffering some of the worst consequences — make the transition to cleaner energy and build resilience to fiercer storms, droughts and rising seas.

The Biden administration has promised $11.4 billion annually by 2024, but that is subject to congressional approval. Ms. Yellen said on Wednesday that the private sector also needed to provide more financing.

Mark Carney, the former Bank of England governor, said that private funds to developing countries must “dramatically scale up.” This week, Mr. Carney led an initiative by financial groups to commit to using their $130 trillion in assets to help countries hit their targets of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

The separate financing program that Ms. Yellen described is designed to issue bonds and use the proceeds to support clean energy and sustainable infrastructure in developing economies. The bonds will be issued by the Climate Investment Funds, a multilateral fund based at the World Bank that invests money contributed by countries including the United States, Britain and Japan.

Many environmental groups and organizations that represent developing countries are skeptical of private finance. That is in part because most of that money tends to go toward energy projects that can turn quicker profits, rather than the less lucrative but critical work of building sea walls, planting mangroves and other efforts to help communities adapt to the effects of climate change.

Jörn Kalinski, a senior adviser at Oxfam, said in a statement that without time frames and specific dollar targets for adaptation, “poorer nations will continue to lack the resources they need to protect lives, homes and businesses from weather disasters.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other world leaders have decamped from Glasgow to their respective capitals. But London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, has stayed on at COP26 to press his case that big-city mayors are just as vital as world leaders, if not more so, in fighting climate change and its effects.

“Cities have got to be the innovators, the problem-solvers, the change-makers that are going to fix climate change,” he said Wednesday. National governments he said, “can’t do it by themselves — they’ve got to do it with us.”

On Monday, Mr. Khan led a delegation of 12 mayors from Los Angeles, Paris, Athens, Rio de Janeiro, and other cities to Glasgow, traveling on an electric train from London. The mayors said their goal was to lobby leaders for more ambitious commitments to emissions reductions, and for help in transforming cities.

Mr. Khan’s goal of making London a carbon-neutral city by 2030 is two decades ahead of the national target set by former Prime Minister Theresa May, Mr. Johnson’s predecessor. As a mayor, he acknowledges he has the power to set policies that would cover only half the emissions reductions necessary to get London to that goal.

He called on the national government to step up with subsidies to retrofit old buildings, accelerate the shift to renewable energy and phase out fossil-fuel-burning cars and trucks. Mr. Khan, a member of the Labour Party, expressed mild frustration with the efforts of Mr. Johnson, a Conservative.

The mayor promoted London’s efforts to reduce emissions, most notably by instituting, and then expanding, an ultralow-emissions zone that imposes hefty charges on cars with high-emission engines in the city center. London has also moved aggressively to replace its buses and taxis with electric models.

Mr. Khan is the new chairman of C40 Cities, a coalition of mayors from more than 100 cities that together account for 700 million people. He listed a litany of climate-related disasters — floods in New York City and London, fires in Greece and Australia — and said, “Our citizens are demanding a response.”

Mr. Khan famously clashed with former President Donald J. Trump during a visit by the American leader to London in June 2019. “Your values and what you stand for are the complete opposite of London’s values,” Mr. Khan said in a video timed to the visit. Mr. Trump shot back on Twitter that Mr. Khan was a “stone cold loser” who should fix London’s soaring crime rate.

On Wednesday, Mr. Khan took relish in noting that it was the first anniversary of Mr. Trump’s defeat by President Biden. “Imagine, in a parallel universe, we were having this conference with a different president,” he said.

Australia, a major producer of fossil fuels that has long been criticized for dragging its feet on climate change, has done little this week to change that perception.

At the Glasgow climate summit, Prime Minister Scott Morrison did not join an international effort to curb global emissions of methane 30 percent by 2030, a commitment shared by more than 100 nations including the United States. Australia also declined to strengthen its 2030 target for reducing emissions or announce firm plans to transition away from its deep investment in fossil fuel production.

Mr. Morrison did sign on to an agreement to end deforestation by 2030, offered $500 million in new funding to help neighboring countries deal with the effects of climate change and last week committed to getting his country to net zero emissions by 2050. But critics argued that his government was not acting with enough urgency, or that it was making vague commitments.

Addressing the conference on Monday, Mr. Morrison said that Australia’s emissions would fall 35 percent by 2030, exceeding an earlier goal of 26 to 28 percent but still well below the targets set by other industrialized nations. And it is one of the last developed nations to make a zero-emissions commitment.

Mr. Morrison had agreed to attend the summit only after criticism from Queen Elizabeth II and a crowd-funded billboard in Times Square in New York that mocked his reluctance to address climate change, calling him “Coal-o-phile Dundee.”

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