Carney-championed Net-Zero Banking Alliance shuts down after losing most of its members
Jameson Berkow
Oct 3, 2025
Almost exactly four years after Prime Minister Mark Carney convinced Canada’s largest financial institutions to join a global alliance committed to net-zero emissions related to their lending, the organization is shutting down.
The Net-Zero Banking Alliance, or NZBA, which Mr. Carney helped to establish in April, 2021, while serving as a United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance, ceased operations Friday after losing most of its membership. Political pressure from Republican lawmakers in the United States led the alliance’s largest American members to abandon the group in late 2024. All of Canada’s largest lenders also bailed earlier this year.
The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
When the alliance was first established ahead of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP26, Vancouver City Savings Credit Union was the sole Canadian member of the group that included 63 financial institutions from 32 countries with US$40-trillion in assets. Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and National Bank of Canada jointly announced plans to join the group in October, 2021.
The alliance went on to publish more than a dozen reports that, according to its website, helped almost 150 banks around the world develop climate-related business strategies and set more than 500 sectoral net-zero targets.
After a widespread backlash to climate-related corporate initiatives that accelerated after the election victory of U.S. President Donald Trump in November, 2024, businesses started a mass exodus from environmentally focused groups.
The Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, or NZAMI, the sister organization to the alliance for institutional investors that had more than 325 members managing a combined US$57.5-trillion in assets, also suspended operations in January after its largest member – BlackRock Inc. – decided to leave.
Shortly before leaving the alliance, the chief executives of RBC and BMO suggested it was no longer the best mechanism for financial institutions to pursue their climate goals.
“If our countries have an objective to get to a certain point, we will be part of that, and therefore pulling out of NZBA hypothetically doesn’t lead to non-commitment to net-zero climate change,” RBC chief executive Dave McKay said at a Jan. 8 conference, one week before the lender left the alliance.
“It just means that mechanism, that organization that fostered oversight and policies and rules around what you can and can’t do and how you report, maybe that is not the right mechanism to do it,” he said.
Speaking at the same conference, BMO chief executive Darryl White said the bank was still committed to climate transition, but added, “We also have a commitment, particularly here in Canada, to our legacy energy customers, and we will not abandon that.”
“What mechanism you choose to join or bodies that you choose to align with to enforce that –that’s just a pathway,” Mr. White said. “The ultimate goal is unchanged.”
Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist at Greenpeace Canada, said the collapse of the alliance highlights the limits of relying on voluntary measures.
“While Mark Carney the central banker warned the world of the risk climate change posed to the financial system, Mark Carney the Prime Minister can protect our economy and environment by bringing in rules that force banks to take a longer term perspective and shift investment from fossil fuels to clean energy,” Mr. Stewart said in an e-mail.
Prime Minister Mark Carney had convinced Canada’s largest lenders to commit to net-zero emissions in 2021
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