Former mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg is to head an international task force established by Bank of England governor Mark Carney to educate businesses about the risk climate change poses to them.
Carney, who also chairs the Financial Stability Board, made the announcement on Friday at the COP21 summit in Paris.
The task force will develop voluntary company disclosures, used to inform investors about the risks businesses face from climate change, including dramatic changes in pricing of fossil fuels and other assets.
While Bloomberg will chair the task force, he will be joined by another ten people whose job will be to set out its scope and objectives. This will be achieved by the end of March, and then a further 20 members of the task force are to draft specific recommendations for voluntary disclosure principles and best practice guidelines by the end of next year.
“Access to high quality financial information will allow market participants and policymakers to understand and better manage those risks, which are likely to grow with time,” Carney said.
The guidelines are to consider physical, liability and transition risks businesses will face with regards climate change, and will also set out the financial disclosures companies must make.
It comes just months after Carney, as FSB chair, said that businesses face increasing levels of risk from extreme weather events, which would in turn affect insurers.
More details regarding the task force are to be disclosed at a later date.
Businesses in the UK or multinationals with offices within the country will also have to comply with guidelines under the Energy Savings Obligation Scheme (ESOS), which comes into force later this month. All companies that fit the qualifying criteria must disclose a report of their energy consumption and plans to reduce it or run the risk of receiving sanctions.
