The Center for Carbon Transition (CCT) was a specialist unit of JPMorgan Chase, the largest US bank by assets, set up to give corporate and institutional clients a single point of access to the bank's sustainability-focused financing, research and advisory services. JPMorgan announced it in October 2020, alongside a commitment to align its financing activities with the goals of the Paris Agreement. It was first led by Rama Variankaval, a managing director who also ran the firm's Corporate Finance Advisory team. The name is sometimes written "Center for Carbon Transition (CTT)", but the bank's own abbreviation is CCT.
Besides advising clients, the CCT developed and tracked the bank's portfolio-level carbon-intensity targets and oversaw its Carbon Assessment Framework. In October 2026 JPMorganChase combined the CCT and its Corporate Sustainability group into a new Center for Energy and the Environment (CE&E), led by Heather Zichal, the firm's global head of sustainability.
The Center for Carbon Transition in plain terms
Think of a large builders' merchant that sells everything from bricks to boilers. As customers start asking how to make their homes cheaper to heat and less polluting, the merchant opens an advice desk staffed by specialists, who help customers plan the work and then point them to the right products and loans. The same desk also keeps track of how "green" the merchant's own sales are becoming.
The CCT was that advice desk inside an investment bank. Companies came to it to discuss how to cut emissions and how to pay for it, for example through green bonds or loans tied to climate targets, while the bank used the same team to measure the carbon intensity of its own lending.
Functions
JPMorgan described the CCT's work under several headings:
- Client advice. Helping corporate clients assess the business impact of the energy transition, set targets and design decarbonisation strategies, drawing on the bank's capital markets, M&A and corporate finance teams.
- Financing. Connecting clients with sustainable finance products, including green, sustainability and sustainability-linked bonds and loans, project finance for renewables, and power purchase agreements.
- Research. Publishing analysis on carbon markets, low-carbon technologies and the economics of the transition.
- Target-setting and measurement. Developing the bank's 2030 carbon-intensity targets for financed emissions in sectors such as oil and gas, electric power and automotive manufacturing, later extended to other heavy industries, and implementing the Carbon Assessment Framework used to assess clients' emissions and transition plans.
Context within JPMorgan Chase
The CCT was part of a broader set of climate commitments. In 2021 JPMorgan announced a target to facilitate US$2.5 trillion over ten years for long-term solutions addressing climate change and sustainable development, including US$1 trillion for green initiatives such as renewable energy and clean technology. The CCT's carbon-intensity work fed into the bank's public climate reports, which followed the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) structure.
The political environment changed during the CCT's existence. In February 2024 JPMorgan Asset Management withdrew from Climate Action 100+, and in January 2025 JPMorgan Chase left the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, as several large US banks did, amid pressure from US officials who argued such alliances raised antitrust and governance concerns.
Reorganisation into CE&E
In October 2026, alongside its 2025 sustainability report, JPMorganChase announced the Center for Energy and the Environment, which absorbed the CCT. The bank said the new center would approach energy through four forces: affordability, security, reliability and sustainability. It updated its carbon-intensity targets to reference the International Energy Agency's 2025 net-zero scenario, described the targets as a compass for tracking portfolio carbon intensity rather than limits on financing, and broadened the green objective of its US$2.5 trillion target to count financing for power grids, nuclear energy and low-carbon energy at diversified power companies. Reports on the change said the deadline for the interim targets moved from 2030 to 2035.
Assessment and criticism
Bank climate advisory units such as the CCT have been viewed in different ways. Supporters saw them as a practical way for large lenders to help clients finance the transition and to make carbon a routine part of credit risk and due diligence analysis. Environmental groups criticised JPMorgan, among other large banks, for continuing to provide substantial financing to fossil fuel companies while promoting its transition work, and questioned whether intensity targets, which can fall even when absolute emissions rise, were meaningful. From the opposite side, some US politicians and shareholder groups argued that banks should not adopt climate-related lending policies at all. The 2026 reorganisation, with its emphasis on energy security and affordability alongside emissions, reflected that changed climate. For readers, the CCT is an example of how banks organised sustainable finance work in the early 2020s and how it was later reframed; the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA) are comparable efforts on the investor side, and the bank's corporate responsibility reporting covers its other activities.