The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which regulates the government-sponsored mortgage investors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in addition to the Federal Home Loan Bank System, has completed its withdrawal from the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).
The NGFS is an international body conceived as a “consensus-based forum” for advancing the development of environment and climate risk management in the financial sector, according to its website.
“Biden drove housing costs up with politicized nonsense that prioritized climate activists over American families,” said Bill Pulte, director of the FHFA, in a press release announcing the formalized withdrawal.
The FHFA’s action follows in the footsteps of the Federal Reserve Board and U.S. Treasury Department, each of which exited the NGFS earlier in 2025 in keeping with the Trump administration’s environmental stance.
In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, President Donald Trump lambasted the international community’s efforts to address, study and invest in resilience to climate change, calling it the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
Per the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, roughly 20% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2022 were attributable to residential households.
One month before President Joe Biden left office, the FHFA formalized its commitment to tackling housing challenges exacerbating — and exacerbated by — climate change and the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather. Those challenges span reconstruction after natural disasters to surging insurance costs across the country.
Many FHFA initiatives served to enhance Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s capacity to measure, monitor and manage climate-related risks, while others supported so-called “green bond” issuance for loans on properties that met energy efficiency thresholds.
The FHFA’s Strategic Plan: Fiscal Years 2022-2026 included a section on identifying options for incorporating climate change into regulated entity governance as part and parcel of the regulator’s approach to safety and soundness.
Entities across the home building and housing finance ecosystem supported the efforts of the FHFA to address emerging climate-related risks, as outlined in the strategic plan.
“FHFA’s heightened attention to the risks and effects of climate change is timely and appropriate,” the Mortgage Bankers Association noted in public comments submitted in response to the strategic plan, while laying out a framework for aligning related action.
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) stated: “The means and strategies FHFA listed for identifying options to incorporate climate change and natural disaster response into the regulated entity governance focus heavily on data collection, research, analysis and reporting. NAHB believes these measures are reasonable and are good first steps.”
Commented the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions: “NAFCU supports the incorporation of climate change into the GSEs’ governance and appreciates the FHFA’s focus on improving climate data collection, analysis and reporting, as well as evaluating the risks and effects of climate change on the housing finance system.”
And the National Alliance of Community Economic Development Associations recommended that “if the regulated entities are to conduct research on the risks of climate change on the mortgage market, it is critical for such research to carefully and explicitly consider how climate and mortgage dynamics are impacting low and moderate [sic] people and places and others who have historically had a harder time accessing the mortgage market.”
