From Barclays to Citigroup, world’s top bankers likely to return to COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai this year

The world’s top bankers and investors are most likely to attend the biggest climate summit this year, which is scheduled to take place in Dubai.

According to a report by Bloomberg news agency, banks such as Barclays Plc, Citigroup Inc., and Standard Chartered Plc are preparing to send larger delegations this year to Dubai for the COP28 Summit after missing last year’s United Nations climate conference in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh.

Bill Winters, who runs Standard Chartered, will attend December’s COP28 meeting in Dubai, Bloomberg confirmed.

Barclays Chief Executive Officer CS Venkatakrishnan is also planning to be at COP28. His team will host client events on increasing the flow of money to climate technologies and developing carbon-saving projects.

The UK bank expects that talk about climate finance will find a receptive audience in the Middle East, where sustainable finance activity has been increasing.

The return of bankers will create a big opportunity to talk up their efforts to help finance a quicker transition to green energy.

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BloombergNEF estimates that banks need to channel four times as much capital into renewable energy as they do into fossil fuels by the end of the decade for the world to have a chance of achieving net-zero emissions by midcentury.

The last time big bank CEOs came out in force to a COP was in 2021 when the unveiling of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, a collection of many of the world’s biggest lenders and asset managers committed to achieving net zero financed emissions by 2050, was one of the headline achievements.

At last year’s climate summit, another persistent topic of discussion on the official Finance Day was how international lenders such as the World Bank can reduce the risk for private companies in financing clean energy investments in developing economies.