ZURICH (Reuters) – The Swiss National Bank reiterated its commitment to tackling climate change on Wednesday, saying it would take environmental factors into consideration in its macroeconomic modeling and monetary policy analysis.
The SNB repeated its stance in a declaration by the Network for Greening the Financial System, a group of central banks it joined in 2019, published to coincide with the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow.
The SNB said it also bought green bonds and excluded companies that systematically cause severe environmental damage from its foreign currency investments which run close to 1 trillion Swiss francs ($1.10 trillion). It also excludes coal mining companies from its investments.
Still, SNB Governing Board member Andrea Maechler last week said there were limits to what the SNB could do, and pursuing environmental goals could even be detrimental to reaching its monetary policy targets.
“We don’t have the goal to make the world greener. That’s not our mandate,” Maechler said last week.
($1 = 0.9115 Swiss francs)
(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Michael Shields)
