Towards green banking

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to present, using the method of critical analysis of the literature, the selected issues accompanying the phenomenon of so-called "green banking". Green banking includes two main aspects. Internally, it manifests itself as an effort to make the operation of banks environmentally neutral. In the external aspect, i.e. the scope of banks' operation in the market, the idea of green banking is used in the selection of assets in which banks financially engage. As a result, banking institutions are becoming an important instrument for transmitting environmental policy impulses to the economy, particularly by excluding the financing of some traditional industries such as the fossil fuel industry. While the goal of climate protection itself is understandable, the manner and pace of pursuing it is no longer necessarily so. On the one hand, banks succumbing to political and social pressure are imposing pro-environmental missions on themselves, including a rapid shift away from financing the fossil fuel industry. On the other hand, such an approach results in a feedback mechanism through which the likelihood of the creation of so-called stranded assets in the financial system increases, i.e. the loss of value of bank assets previously involved in and linked to environmentally damaging industries. The magnitude of the impact of this phenomenon on the stability of the financial system is difficult to estimate, as its negative effects will not only directly affect the funds involved in certain industries but will also cause the price of commodities and thus of derivatives based on them or related to them to become unstable.