In this issue

Welcome to Leasing Life’s quarterly e-magazine for asset finance and leasing professionals in the UK and Continental Europe.

This edition will focus on asset finance banks and climate change given that as we go to press, the world is gearing up for COP27, the UN’s climate summit taking place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt (6-18 November), where more than 35,000 delegates are expected to attend, including more than 100 heads of state.

Ahead of the meeting, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body created to assess climate change based on the latest science, issued a stark warning. Based on existing trajectories, countries' current climate commitments will lead to a 10.6% rise in emissions by 2030. According to the IPCC, a 43% reduction in emissions by 2030 will be needed to limit global warming to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures.

Meanwhile, in its 2022 World Energy Outlook, the IEA reaffirmed its 2021 policy conclusion that new oil and gas fields and coal mines are not needed in a world staying below 1.5°C of warming. It said the development of “new fields will not alleviate current volatility and instability in fossil fuel markets, given a four-year lag time, on average, for new upstream fields to move from approval to initial production.”

This raises the question: who is funding new fossil fuel development? Our feature story, Financing chaos and bank asset finance looks at a recent report

Against the backdrop of COP27, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), a grouping of 500+ global financial institutions “committed to accelerating the decarbonisation of the economy” with many significant asset finance banks as members, recently dropped a requirement for its members to sign up to a UN emissions reduction campaign, a move widely seen as easing the pressure on funders to act on climate change.

Our feature Who will (asset) finance the climate-action revolution? looks at why GFANZ may be getting cold feet when it comes to taking action, and the feature also offers a review of which asset finance banks are showing climate change leadership in this neck of the woods.