COP21 Briefing, Dec. 9: Investors call for corporate renewable energy commitment

A £352bn (€485bn) coalition of 20 investors coordinated by campaign group ShareAction are calling on leading firms to commit to using 100% renewable power. The investors are calling on companies to demonstrate their commitment by signing up to join the ‘RE100’ initiative, where firms pledge to switch to 100% renewable electricity for their international operations by an agreed date. Google and BMW have joined in the past week. Founding investors include Aviva Investors, Strathclyde Pension Fund, Environment Agency Pension Fund, French pension fund ERAFP, Norwegian fund KLP and Menhaden Capital (see separate article from Strathclyde’s Richard Keely).

Environmental data firm Trucost has expanded its EBoard service, a tool providing company data and portfolio analytics on carbon and broader natural resource dependencies, to offer an energy transition toolkit to manage portfolio alignment to two degree energy transition pathways and divestment criteria.

Trucost and US supplier of ESG-focused technology and analytics, TruValue Labs, have announced a new partnership to provide investors with enhanced, real-time environmental, social and governance (ESG) data. It is hoped clients will get a complete and up-to-date understanding of a company’s environmental performance and evolving management.

The Global Green Growth Institute, which fosters sustainable economic growth in developing countries, has launched the ‘Inclusive Green Growth Partnership’ to support finance for green growth projects that promote inclusiveness, shared prosperity and equitable growth. The funding members of the Partnership include leading development banks such as the Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

The Norwegian municipality of Oslo has become the first to be listed on the Oslo Børs’ green list. The Oslo Børs is the first stock exchange to have separate lists for green bonds – currently there are 10 issues, reportedly valued at NOK14.6bn.The Science Based Targets initiative, a joint endeavour by the CDP, the UN Global Compact, World Resource Institute (WRI) and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) seeking to catalyse action on C02 emissions, has announced that 114 companies (with a combined annual emissions of 476m tonnes of C02) have now committed to set a science-based target to reduce emissions. Included on the list are: AXA Group, Bank J. Safra Sarasin, ING, Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola. Link

Sweden’s Minister for International Development Cooperation Isabella Lövin is set to announce that the Swedish Government will increase its support to expanding renewable energy infrastructure in developing countries, with SEK20m going to the World Bank Scaling up Renewable Energy Programme (SREP) and SEK15m to the UN Secretary-General’s Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) initiative.

Northern Trust Asset Management has released a survey of more than 30 Nordic institutional investors, reportedly including some of the largest asset owners in the world, which demonstrates that 80% of those surveyed expect their firm to introduce climate risk profiling within the next two years. Ninety percent also expected internal resourcing and the amount of capital allocated to governance and compliance to increase. The survey also cites quality of data as a key challenge to implementing a sustainable investment strategy, with 30% of those surveyed recognising this as an issue.

Caring for Climate (C4C), an initiative jointly convened by the UN Global Compact, UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the secretariat of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), gathered more than 700 participants over two-days from business, finance, government, civil society and the United Nations (including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon; France’s Minister of Environment, Sustainable Development and Energy, Ségolène Royal, and Secretary of State of the United States John Kerry) to discuss the role of the private sector in advancing the climate agenda.