Green Finance and Central Banking

How to deal with climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time. Many central banks have taken on the challenge by promoting the concept of ‘Green Finance’. But while the importance of dealing with climate change is not in question, there is still a debate what the role of central banks should be. On the one hand, Chairman Powel of the US Federal Reserve has recently stated that “[c]limate change is an important issue but not principally for the Fed”, while, on the other hand, the Bank of England has had climate change concerns added to its mandate.

How have central banks engaged in the quest for ‘green finance’? Why is there a debate about whether this is the role of central banks? Do central banks have effective tools to promote green finance? Our panelists in this ‘Conversations on Central Banking’ will provide their perspectives on these very important questions.
 

About the Panelists:

Philipp Hildebrand, Former Chairman of Swiss National Bank & Vice President of BlackRock

Philipp Hildebrand is currently Vice Chairman of BlackRock and a member of the firm’s Global Executive Committee. Philipp has served as a Senior Visiting Fellow at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and he sits on the School’s International Advisory Board. He served as Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) in 2012. In that capacity, he was a Director of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Swiss Governor of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a member of the Financial Stability Board (FSB). In November 2011, the Leaders of the G20 appointed him Vice Chairman of the FSB, in same year, he received the Central Banker of the Year, Europe, Award from The Banker.

Mr. Hildebrand is also a member of the Group of Thirty and an Honorary Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. He earned a BA from the University of Toronto in 1988, a Master's degree from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva in 1990, and a DPhil from the University of Oxford in 1994.
 

Sabine Mauderer, Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank

Dr. Sabine Mauderer has been Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank since September 2018. She is responsible for the Directorates Markets and Human Re-sources. Additionally she is a member of the Exchange Experts Commission, the Central Capital Market Committee, and the Steering Committee of the “Central banks and Supervi-sors Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS)”. Prior to her current responsibilities she held several positions at the KfW Banking group, e.g. Head of Banking Sector Restruc-turing and Head of Auditing, Risk Management, IT and Major Projects. Before that she worked as a senior adviser at the Federal Ministry of Finance. She was born in Schleswig in 1970.

Sabine Mauderer graduated in law, holds a PhD by the Osnabrück University and an Executive MBA by the ESSEC & Mannheim Business School.