In a move packed with political and regulatory irony, the Royal Bank of Canada quietly scrapped its flagship sustainable finance targets on Tuesday just one day after former UN climate finance czar and GFANZ founder — aka Mark Carney — was elected Prime Minister of Canada.
The country’s largest bank announced in its 2024 sustainability report that it would no longer pursue its $500 billion sustainable finance goal, citing recent changes to the federal Competition Act.
The revisions, long dubbed the “greenwashing law,” now require companies to substantiate all environmental claims with concrete proof, a shift that has sent shockwaves through the corporate sustainability world — in addition to oil and gas companies.
“We have reviewed our methodology and have concluded that it may not have appropriately measured certain of our sustainable finance activities,” RBC said in the report, which was released with little fanfare.
The bank also revealed it would no longer disclose key metrics such as its energy supply ratio, which tracks the balance of financing between high- and low-carbon energy sources.
The timing of the announcement, coming just 24 hours after Carney’s election, was impossible to ignore.
That’s because the former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor spent recent years as the global face of climate finance, spearheading the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), a UN-backed initiative aimed at aligning the financial sector with climate goals.
RBC was one of its founding members. Today, not a single major Canadian bank remains.
Amid mounting criticism and regulatory uncertainty, GFANZ has hemorrhaged credibility, with several member banks — including U.S. giants JPMorgan and Citigroup — also quietly backing away from their net-zero pledges.
The alliance’s future is now in question, dogged by accusations of greenwashing, inconsistent reporting standards, and what critics describe as Carney’s “top-down, PR-driven” approach to climate accountability.
RBC’s about-face is being read not just as regulatory caution but as a sign of broader political winds shifting. Under the newly amended Competition Act, corporations must ensure all environmental claims meet rigorous substantiation standards or face steep penalties.
RBC climate vice president Jennifer Livingston said the bank remains “committed to supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy,” but defended the decision to withhold disclosure of certain climate metrics.
“We are disappointed not to share these metrics externally,” she said, citing the absence of internationally recognized methodologies for some of the bank’s targets. “We will continue to monitor and report them internally.”
Critics weren’t convinced.
“The Competition Act provisions do not stop companies from making claims that can be substantiated,” said Tanya Jemec, a finance lawyer with Ecojustice. “RBC’s refusal to disclose its energy financing ratio suggests a lack of confidence in its own methodology.”
The move by RBC underscores a growing tension between corporate climate crusaders and the increasing legal and political scrutiny around how those promises are measured — and whether they can hold up in court.
Now, the question is whether Prime Minister Carney — who once rallied the global financial elite to “move from climate risk to climate opportunity” — will intervene to restore trust in a system he helped create, or whether the era of corporate climate ambition is beginning to quietly fade under the weight of its own accountability.
