The big investors of this world are all faced with the same dilemma: should we continue to finance fossil fuel producers or cut them off to accelerate the energy transition?

The issue was brought to the table on Wednesday by Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, who now leads an international alliance of financial institutions on their way to carbon neutrality, and Guy Cormier, President and CEO of Desjardins Group, on the occasion of a Summit on Sustainable Finance held in Montreal.

So, leave or stay there? “We can do both,” replied Guy Cormier, who recalled that the institution he leads has already made the choice not to invest in coal or pipelines.

Desjardins also chooses to continue to support polluting companies “when there is a way to have a positive influence,” said Guy Cormier. It is always possible to walk away after a few years if no progress can be seen, he added.

Mark Carney, for his part, believes that investors who stick with fossil fuel producers must demand a credible plan from them to achieve carbon neutrality.

If this is not possible, other solutions exist, according to Mark Carney. He gave the example of Brookfield Asset Management, of which he is a director, which joined forces with other investors to acquire Australia’s largest energy producer, responsible for 7% of all the country’s emissions, to privatize it and invest several billion in it in order to put it on the path to carbon neutrality.

These investors believe that the company will increase in value as it transforms, explained Mark Carney.

To be credible, this plan must establish whether the company is part of the problem or part of the solution towards the energy transition. One way to evaluate this plan is to look at whether the proportion of a company’s expenditure on the energy transition is increasing compared to its other expenditure.

As the UN’s Special Envoy for Climate Action Finance and leader of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), Mark Carney must see that financial institutions, which have the responsibility to finance energy transition, do not have the same vision of things. Insurers have already left the alliance formed in 2021 and banks have threatened to do so if rules that are too restrictive are imposed on them.

For his part, the president of Desjardins insisted on the fact that it is urgent to act. We don’t have a planet B, he said. Guy Cormier testified that his company observes the impact of climate change very closely. “Half our income comes from insurance,” he said. Before, we insured fires, today we insure floods and natural disasters. »