The Institute of Sustainable Finance (IFD), dedicated to the fight against global warming within Paris Europlace, announced Friday that its Observatory would be headed from the beginning of 2024 by the Louis Bachelier scientific institute.
With this transfer, we are clarifying the scope of the projects and the data, commented the new general director of the IFD Cécile Goubet, quoted in a press release.
This announcement comes as international negotiations on climate and energy transition are underway within the framework of COP28, Dubai.
Several sources mention tensions between the Sustainable Finance Observatory and its current pilots: the French Banking Federation (FBF), France Insurers, or even the professional private equity federation France Invest, lobbied by their respective sectors of activity.
The Observatory retains its main public support, Ademe (Ecological Transition Agency), and will take up residence within the Louis Bachelier Institute, an academic center specializing in economics and finance.
Brought together with an existing structure at its new host, the Climate Transparency Hub, they will work within the Parc foundation, for Paris Agreement Research Commons.
The orientations of the Observatory’s work will be more international and more linked to the academic sphere, explains the press release.
The IFD will continue to publish its members’ data on sustainable finance but will therefore lose the critical perspective and perspective provided by the Observatory.
Former advisor to the Minister of Energy Transition Agns Pannier-Runacher, Ms. Goubet has replaced Pauline Becquey since the beginning of October, who left after a little over two years with a private equity fund, Turenne Groupe.
The IFD took over at the end of last year from Finance for Tomorrow, created around Climate Finance Day after its first edition in 2015.
The first version was a bit of a troublemaker, remembers Laurent Lascols, of the Higher Institute of the Environment, contacted by AFP.
According to him, by becoming the IFD, the entity lost this role a little (…) we made it fit into the mold of Paris Europlace, he said.
The Observatory tried to keep its line. In a study published last week, he called on bankers, insurers and asset managers to be more transparent in the information they publish regarding their energy transition efforts.