{"id":9366,"date":"2026-04-27T21:48:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.openvaluefoundation.org\/?p=9366"},"modified":"2026-04-27T21:48:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:48:31","slug":"blog-post-82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/2026\/04\/27\/blog-post-82\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog post 82"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Wednesday, 14th October, Deusto Business School, in collaboration with ICADE, brought together Juan Carlos Delrieu, Director of Strategy and Sustainability at the Spanish Banking Association, Juli\u00e1n P\u00e9rez de Madrid, Director of Corporate & Investment Banking at Banco Sabadell, and our founder, Mar\u00eda \u00c1ngeles Le\u00f3n, for a panel discussion on challenges and prospects of green and sustainable finance.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following that encounter, at the Open Value Foundation we have had the opportunity to speak with Juan Carlos Delrieu to delve into the global trends in sustainable finance and the role of banking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let's start by providing some context. Juan Carlos, how have we got to this point?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientific evidence and the number of extreme and adverse weather events we've experienced in recent years have placed the problem as a concern for decades. But if I had to pinpoint a starting point for the economic impact of Climate Change, I'd talk about the year 2006 with Nicholas Stern's article from the LSE: \u201cThe Economics of Climate Change<\/a>\u201dwhich discusses the climatic consequences of climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From that year, various milestones have occurred which have led us, exponentially, to today. The first of these is the Paris Agreement<\/a> from the year 2015, where most countries in the world committed to reducing global temperatures to at least 2\u00b0C below the levels of 1990. The second milestone would be the Agenda 2030<\/a>, which is a modern update of the Millennium Development Goals and has a strong implication in creating a common language worldwide with common social, economic and environmental goals through 17 Sustainable Development Goals<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third would be marked by the article published by the former Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney: \u201cBreaking the tragedy of the horizon<\/a>\u201dIt is the first to highlight that Climate Change can have an impact on financial stability, not only through the physical risk that can reduce the value of a bank's assets, but also due to transition risks that arise when we try to mitigate the consequences of Climate Change. Ultimately, climate risk management must be integrated into the strategy of financial institutions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourthly, the World Economic Forum<\/a>, This reflects, over the last three or four years, that the main risks, those with the highest probability and the highest impact, are those related to climate change. This forum assures that the sensitivity of businesses and citizens to these issues is increasing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The European Union, driven by these trends, marked what I would consider the fifth milestone in that sequence in 2018 by defining a set of very ambitious goals to decarbonise the region in terms of energy efficiency, renewable energy consumption, and emissions reduction. To achieve these targets, it was estimated that \u20ac260 billion per year would be required until 2030. As this is an enormous amount of money, the European Commission considered it necessary to have a framework that sets out the path that sustainable finance should follow, and for this purpose, it established the Sustainable Finance Action Plan<\/a> defined through ten objectives, of which the European Union's taxonomy stands out for the agility with which progress has been made and for its significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the most recent milestone on this path, in my opinion, focuses on the European Union's robust response to the pandemic in the form of a European Green Deal<\/a> which has resulted in the NextGenerationEU Plan<\/a>, which is based on two key principles: conditionality and efficiency. This plan has been allocated a budget of 750,000 million euros, of which around 35% should be directed towards modernising the economy to make it more environmentally sustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This whole set of pieces opens up enormous opportunities for all stakeholders, for the financial sector and businesses, but it is also a remarkable opportunity for economic and social transformation, and ultimately, for the modernisation of our countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What role has banking played in recent years?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Banks are the nervous system of any economy in the world and therefore will always support major transformations. But in this case their role is differential because the relationship between finance and sustainability is bidirectional. A biunivocal relationship that is based on two motives:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firstly, because while this productive and social transformation represents a business opportunity, climate change generates a set of risks that require adequate management to prevent financial system instability, which has reinforced the vigilance and sensitivity of financial regulators and supervisors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondly, because the financial system is not a polluting sector per se, but its business decisions and the speed at which it decides to drive the change required by a low-carbon economy can have significant economic and social implications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There will be winners and losers in this transformation. This is not a revolution of the elites, but of social design, which demands co-responsibility with investors and consumers, with regulators, and above all with the Public Administration, which must define the lanes through which to navigate this productive and social transformation towards a more sustainable economy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the banking sector has not stood still waiting for regulations and regulatory frameworks to be approved by either the Administration or financial regulators. Instead, it has clearly sought to anticipate these from the outset, doing so with complicity and conviction. These attributes, beyond the individual initiatives proposed by each entity, have translated in our country into three fundamental initiatives that reflect the sector's degree of commitment: the Corporate Social Responsibility function has not only transformed into a sustainability area, but its responsibility within organisations has increased, becoming an additional strategic pillar; the Centre for Sustainable and Responsible Finance has been established.Financial Responsibility<\/a>) with which we aim to accelerate the impact of sustainable finance through best practices and innovative financial formulas; but, above all, I would highlight the Climate Action Pact<\/a> which we signed alongside around 951 Spanish banks at COP25 to commit to decarbonising our portfolios in line with the targets set out in the Paris Agreement.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

El pasado mi\u00e9rcoles 14 de octubre, Deusto Business School en colaboraci\u00f3n con ICADE, reuni\u00f3 a Juan Carlos Delrieu, Director de Estrategia y Sostenibilidad en la Asociaci\u00f3n Espa\u00f1ola de Banca, Juli\u00e1n P\u00e9rez de Madrid, Director de Corporate & Investment Banking de Banco Sabadell, y a nuestra fundadora, Mar\u00eda \u00c1ngeles Le\u00f3n en una mesa redonda sobre los retos […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9368,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9366\/revisions\/9368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}