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Central banks are now among the most active players in the public debate on climate change and the low-carbon transition. By focusing on central banks’ public communication strategies, this paper addresses how these technocratic institutions have become leaders in shaping the public conversation around climate change issues and the implications of their prominence in the debate.

The authors study climate-related central bank communications using a dataset of more than 35,000 speeches delivered by 131 central banks from 1986 to 2023. They employ natural language processing techniques to identify and trace the evolution of two climate-related narratives, centred respectively on green finance and climate-related risks. They find that central banks’ public communication strategies are primarily driven by underlying institutional factors, rather than exposure to climate-related risks. The authors also find that equity returns of ‘green’ firms outperform those of ‘dirty’ firms when central banks engage more frequently and intensely with climate-related topics.