The Reserve Bank says it will have to account for climate change when setting interest rates.

“The economy is changing all the time in response to a large number of forces,” RBA governor Guy Debelle said in a keynote address to the Centre for Policy Development this week.

“Monetary policy is always having to analyse and assess these forces and their impact on the economy.

“But few of these forces have the scale, persistence and systemic risk of climate change.

“The physical impact of climate change and the transition are likely to have first-order economic effects.”

His full speech is accessible here, while a detailed analysis is available here.