INDEPENDENT & TRIPARTITE
HIGH LEVEL GROUP ON
FINANCING SUSTAINABILITY TRANSITION
The High Level Group on Financing Sustainability Transition was launched in 2018.
In recent years, governments have taken ambitious commitments to engage the industrial transition towards a more sustainable model, the so-called circular economy. Estimates show that around €180 billion of annual additional investments are required to meet the EU 2030 climate and energy targets, and a multiple of this sum to meet the 2050 objectives. The Paris Climate Agreement has added pressure for radical innovation.
It is not obvious how the wholescale transformation of large, particularly energy intensive industries with significant investments in fixed assets can be managed within the current regulatory frameworks.
This HLG is chaired by Pietro Carlo Padoan, former Minister of Economy and Finance of Italy.
Previous chair: Jeroen Dijsselbloem, former Minister of Finance of the Netherlands and chairman of the Eurozone Group of Finance Ministers.
The aspiration to ensure that actors across all sectors of the economy will be able to finance their transition to climate-neutrality regardless of their starting point will require significant finance for the development and scaling of net-zero technologies. It will also be crucial to enable the transition of those companies that are not yet aligned while accelerating the phasing-out of carbon-intensive assets.
​
An advanced sustainable finance architecture with a deepened Capital Markets Union, aiming at making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 is in the making and some regulations are at the forefront of their field. Yet, there are some gaps and inconsistencies in the current framework, which remains too fragmented or unfit for transition investments.
​
The European Commission will have to focus at strengthening the effectiveness of the current framework, based on more solid research about market realities. Some measures can be implemented in the short term; other more structural issues remain and require deeper policy changes.
​
In addition, realistic and verifiable criteria will have to be designed which would permit governments to come together and ensure the required transition and innovation funding, as advocated in every analysis of the current European economic stagnation.
The following people, from the European and national public sector, from corporations and from academia, gave their time and expertise to the work on financing sustainability transition management:
​
Download: HLG Financing Sustainability Transition Members List
​
​Under revision