| Europe experienced the hottest year on record in 2024, as climate change combined with a strong El Niño to generate a series of extreme weather events and force glaciers into retreat. Half the continent reported new heat records in 2024 and ocean temperatures in Europe were the highest ever recorded, scientists at the Copernicus Climate Change Service and World Meteorological Organization said in their annual analysis of the continent’s climate. Since the 1980s, Europe has warmed twice as fast as the global average, pushing national leaders to intensify their efforts to strengthen early warning systems against extreme weather, according to WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. The extra heat in the atmosphere and ocean likely supercharged storms last year, bringing some of the worst flooding to Europe in more than a decade. Higher European temperatures — 1.47C above normal — led to record rates of glacier mass loss in Scandinavia and Svalbard, the scientists found. That followed another year of extreme temperatures across the continent in 2023. Read the full details of the report on Bloomberg.com.  A woman shields from the sun with a map during high temperatures at Syntagma Square in Athens, Greece, in July 2024. Photographer: Hilary Swift/Bloomberg Most banks in the industry’s biggest climate alliance endorsed a proposal that will refocus the group on providing financial support for the energy transition and also hold signatories to a less stringent standard for reducing the emissions enabled by their lending. The new approach is intended to offer greater flexibility to members of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. Requirements such as the need to set five-year goals for reducing the financed emissions from high-carbon sectors will now become recommendations, according to briefing documents that NZBA shared with its members. In addition, a prior mandate for signatories to align their portfolios with an aim of limiting global warming to 1.5C will be done away with. The vote of confidence in NZBA follows a tumultuous few months for the group. While once claiming to represent more than 40% of global banking assets, the alliance’s asset base has contracted by about a third, or roughly $27 trillion, since the beginning of December, according to data from its website.  The Net-Zero Banking Alliance’s asset base has contracted by about a third, or roughly $27 trillion, since the beginning of December, according to data from the group’s website. Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg Green groups are suing over government climate websites. The Trump administration is facing a legal challenge over removing multiple tools for mapping climate, pollution and other overlapping risks facing the American public, particularly disadvantaged communities, from federal websites. A Green stock exchange moves closer to opening. The Securities and Exchange Commission approved an amended application from Green Impact Exchange (GIX) to register as a national securities exchange, paving the way for the launch of the first green stock exchange. Trading is expected to begin early next year, the company said. Generator startup Mainspring Energy raised $258 million. The company is developing novel generators that create electricity through a flameless reaction of air and fuel. Its technology is now in hot demand from data center customers who need cheap and reliable power. Even with all of the recent market turmoil, the energy transition isn’t taking a break. Last year, global spending on clean-energy technologies was more than $2 trillion, according to BloombergNEF. Yet only a small fraction of that money makes its way to developing countries. On the latest Zero, Avinash Persaud, climate advisor to the president of Inter-American Development Bank, joins the podcast’s Moving Money series, and answers the question: How do we make the financial system work for climate action, not against it? Listen to the full episode and learn more about Zero here. Subscribe on Apple or Spotify to stay on top of new episodes.  Avinash Persaud. Photographer: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg | 
