The Bank of England has shifted its attention away from climate and nature risk since Andrew Bailey took over as governor, senior staff members who resigned from working on those issues at the central bank told the Financial Times.
The FT cited six people who left the BoE between 2020 and last year and complained that the central bank was neglecting climate issues, leaving the financial sector underprepared.
Asked to comment on the FT article, a BoE spokesperson said: “Whilst the government is responsible for climate policy, climate risk threatening our objectives is part of the bank’s remits, and we work to take action accordingly.”
In May, Sarah Breeden, deputy governor for financial stability, said the BoE needs to stay in its “swim lane” when it comes to financial risk from climate change and should not engage in the political debate around net zero.
Meanwhile, James Talbot, an executive director at the BoE, said in a speech that while it might not be the job of central bankers to fight climate change, the topic is becoming more important for monetary policy as droughts and floods hit economic growth and trigger inflation.
Britain’s ruling Labour party has pledged to make the UK a “clean energy superpower” and the world’s “green finance capital”, as well as double onshore wind, triple solar power and quadruple offshore wind by 2030.
The UK has a legally binding target to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, but this has come under attack by conservative and rightwing politicians who say the timeline is impossible and should be abandoned.
The Labour government has reinstated climate change as an important objective of central bank policy but it is sending mixed messages on the centrality of the goal as it seeks to revive growth in the UK economy, experts say.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves told the BoE’s financial policy committee in its annual remit letter that the climate and nature crisis is the greatest long-term global challenge and the risks it poses are relevant to its primary objective of maintaining financial stability.
However, Reeves has also said that she would prioritise growth over reaching net zero if forced to choose.
Under former governor Mark Carney, the BoE was considered a world leader in addressing climate change. However, it slipped down the rankings in last year’s edition of the Green Central Banking Scorecard compiled by thinktank Positive Money after cReeves’ predecessor Jeremy Hunt removed climate change from his remit letter in 2023.
The former employees told the FT they feared the change in priorities had caused the BoE’s technical risk-modelling capacity to fall behind that of the private sector, even as the effects of climate change on the UK have intensified.
The BoE last year opted not to put its name to a Green Finance Institute paper it had worked on which found the hit to UK GDP from nature-related risks could be greater than the global financial crisis or Covid-19, people familiar with the matter told the FT.
This page was last updated June 6, 2025
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Emma Thomasson is a British journalist, consultant and trainer based in Berlin. She is an expert in economics, politics, business and technology. She previously worked for Reuters as a correspondent and bureau chief in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, South Africa and the UK.
