The US Department of the Treasury on Monday named climate change financial adviser John Morton to head the department’s new “climate hub,” disappointing activists who had sought a strong regulator to push financial institutions toward green investments.
John Morton, a partner with climate change advisory and investment firm Pollination Group, would work to foster green finance, and use tax policy and financial risk assessments to help reduce carbon emissions as climate counselor to US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, the department said.
Morton brings more than 25 years of experience in emerging markets, investment finance, and economic and environmental policy, it said.
He served in a senior climate post in the administration of former US president Barack Obama and at the Overseas Private Investment Corp.
Morton would directly report to Yellen and advise her on a broad range of climate matters, especially efforts to facilitate and unlock financing needed for investments to achieve net-zero emissions, the department said.
“Climate change requires economy-wide investments by industry and government, as well as actions to measure and mitigate climate-related risks to households, businesses and our financial sector,” Yellen said in a statement. “Finance and financial incentives will play a crucial role in addressing the climate crisis at home and abroad, and in providing capital for opportunities to transform the economy.”
Morton joined Pollination Group in May last year after setting up the Climate Finance Partnership, a venture capital fund bringing together public, private and philanthropic funds to make climate-related investments in emerging markets.
It included funding from the French and German governments, and BlackRock Inc, the world’s largest asset manager.
Several climate change, financial and consumer advocacy groups called the Treasury’s choice a disappointment, saying that Morton lacked financial regulatory experience and represented a private-sector answer to the problem of climate change.
“Mr Morton’s appointment is not the senior financial regulatory expert that many of us hoped to see,” Amazon Watch climate and finance director Moira Birss said. “A role this important cannot be filled by someone who believes ‘the market’ will fix the climate crisis or who is worried about profitmaking off of the energy transition.”
In February, more than 145 organizations urged Yellen in a letter to choose a climate czar with “deep regulatory expertise” at the US Federal Reserve and the Treasury so that they could force change through regulations.
At Pollination Group, Morton worked with companies that wanted to set ambitious corporate emission reduction and clean investment targets, but did not have firm plans in place.
In an interview with Reuters earlier this year, Morton said that the US needed a stronger leadership voice through development banks and other institutions to mobilize more private capital to developing countries to help them transition to a lower-carbon economy.
“What has been lacking in the last four or five years, there has not been top-down pressure from the [previous] administration. The pressure of the bully pulpit appropriately applied can really unlock things,” he said.
Morton joins several other high-profile climate change positions within the administration of US President Joe Biden, including a White House climate policy team led by former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy and former US secretary of state John Kerry.
Kerry earlier this month said that Biden plans to issue an executive order that would lead to greater disclosures of financial risks to investors by firms and financial institutions.
In mobilizing resources to cut carbon emissions, the climate hub would prioritize the expedited transition of high-emitting sectors and industries, and leverage tax and economic policies to support building climate resilient infrastructure, the Treasury said.
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