Systemic Risk Effects of Climate Transition on Financial Stability

Abstract: We assess how climate transition risk, through its effects on asset prices, could impact financial stability. Using copula functions, we characterize the conditional distribution of financial firm returns under different climate-related market scenarios. We account for average and tail effects of climate transition scenarios on the value of financial firms using three systemic risk metrics: climate transition expected returns, climate transition value-at-risk, and climate transition expected shortfall. Empirical evidence indicates that European banks experience the highest systemic impacts from a disorderly transition, and that the cost of rescuing more risk-exposed financial firms from climate transition losses is relatively manageable.