Using an ecological macrofinancial model, we explore the potential impact of the ‘green supporting factor’ (GSF) and the ‘dirty penalising factor’ (DPF) on climate-related financial risks. We identify the transmission channels by which these green differentiated capital requirements (GDCRs) can affect credit provision and loan spreads, and we analyse these channels within a dynamic framework in which climate and macrofinancial feedback effects play a key role. Our main findings are as follows. First, GDCRs can reduce the pace of global warming and decrease thereby the physical financial risks. This reduction is quantitatively small, but is enhanced when the GSF and the DPF are implemented simultaneously or in combination with green fiscal policies. Second, the DPF reduces banks’ credit provision and leverage, making them less fragile. Third, both the DPF and the GSF generate some transition risks: the GSF increases bank leverage because it boosts green credit and the DPF increases loan defaults since it reduces economic activity. These effects are small in quantitative terms and are attenuated when there is a simultaneous implementation of the DPF and the GSF. Fourth, fiscal policies that boost green investment amplify the transition risks of the GSF and reduce the transition risks of the DPF; the combination of green fiscal policy with the DPF is thereby a potentially effective climate policy mix from a financial stability point of view.

Climate change has been recently recognised as a new source of risk for the financial system. Over the last years, several central banks and financial supervisors have recommended investors and financial institutions to assess their exposure to climate-related financial risks. Central banks and financial supervisors have also started to design scenarios for climate stress tests - to- assess how vulnerable the financial system is to climate change. Nevertheless, the financial community falls short of methodologies that allow the successful analysis of the risks that climate change poses to financial stability. Indeed, the characteristics of climate risks (i.e., deep uncertainty, non-linearity and endogeneity) challenge traditional approaches to macroeconomic and financial risk analysis. Embedding climate change in macroeconomic and financial analysis using innovative perspectives is fundamental for a comprehensive understanding of the macrofinancial relevance of climate change. This Special Issue is devoted to the relation between climate risks and financial stability and represents the first comprehensive attempt to fill methodological gaps in this area and to shed light on the financial implications of climate change. It includes original contributions that use a range of methodologies – such as network modelling, dynamic evolutionary macroeconomic modelling and financial econometrics – to analyse climate-related financial risks and the implications of financial policies and instruments aiming at the low-carbon transition. The research insights of these contributions can inform the decisions of central banks and financial supervisors about the integration of climate change considerations into their policies and financial risk assessment.