Yoon Jong-gyu “The Ukraine crisis is a temporary obstacle to a carbon-neutral agreement”

At the first meeting of the ‘COP26 Business Leaders Group’, a leadership group of the ’26th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26)’, where KB Financial Group Chairman Jong-gyu Yoon was invited by the United Nations and the UK government to accelerate investment in eco-friendly technologies and infrastructure. emphasized that

At the meeting held on the 11th, when asked about the effect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on climate change and the Glasgow Climate Agreement, Chairman Yoon said, “The Ukraine crisis may be an obstacle to international agreement on carbon neutrality in the short term, but in the mid to long term On the other hand, for a stable energy supply and demand, the need for self-renewable energy production will be further expanded.”

The ‘COP26 Business Leaders Group’, established under the initiative of the United Nations and the UK government, is a top-level leadership group in which executives of global eco-friendly companies such as ‘Unilever’, ‘Ikea’ and ‘Mahindra’, including Chairman Alok Sharma, who led COP26 last year, participate.

Through monthly online and offline meetings, ideas for the rapid implementation of COP26’s ‘Glasgow Climate Agreement’ are shared, and COP27, scheduled to be held in Egypt in November of this year, will serve as a bridgehead for the successful hosting.

The background of the UN and British government inviting Chairman Yoon to be a group member is that KB Financial Group approved the first ‘Science-based Carbon Reduction Target (SBTi)’ in the Asian financial sector and ‘Net Zero Banks Association (NZBA)’ Externally, it is believed that this was due to the high evaluation of leading activities for ESG management.

On the same day, Chairman Yoon introduced KB Kookmin Bank’s ‘ESG Consulting’ organization, which was newly established this year as an example of responding to climate change, and said, “The ability to support small and medium-sized enterprises to stably convert to eco-friendly business models and to preoccupy new growth opportunities. is concentrating on,” he said.

“The threat of climate change is still with us,” said Alok Shama, chairman of the board.

Regarding the meeting, a KB Financial official said, “The COP26 Business Leaders Group is a meaningful place where global business leaders from each field, such as energy, automobile, and finance, gather to discuss to overcome environmental and social crises. Through this, I was able to confirm KB Financial’s global leadership in ESG.”

By Jung Gong-ho, staff reporter ball@fortunekorea.co.kr