Resource Database

This report describes the process for building an effective internal campaign within an organization to seize opportunities to encourage employees to adopt greener behaviors, which would result in saving over six million tons of carbon.

This tool, “Looking Beyond”, aims to explain the methodological pathway used by Carbone 4 to help companies assessing how their business strategy is resilient to various transitions trajectories towards a low-carbon future.

This commentary provides a high level overview of the recent economic environment, and is for information purposes only. It is a marketing communication and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to any reader of this content to buy or sell investments nor should it be regarded as investment research. It has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research and is not subject to any prohibition on dealing ahead of its dissemination.

This guidance document aims to inform a number of private and public sector actors on how to implement a carbon price and on what can be expected in the future.

Fourteen global insurers worth over USD 3.5 trillion discuss how they manage the risks and opportunities of climate change.

The interviewees provide peers with practical ways to navigate an increasingly complex environment marked by escalating climate risks and regulatory pressure for better disclosure across underwriting and investment portfolios.

The report by ShareAction/AODP, called ‘Insuring a low-carbon future: A practical guide for insurers on managing climate-related risks and opportunities’, explores current leading practice, identifies common barriers, and presents a framework of industry-tested building blocks relevant for other insurers of all types. It also offers wider recommendations for policymakers, customers, insurers and their investors to help drive the industry towards aligning with a successful low-carbon and climate-resilient transition.

ICMS 3, the third edition to the International Cost Management Standard (ICMS), is a
global standard for benchmarking and reporting of construction project cost and
carbon, providing a consistent method to be delivered for carbon life cycle reporting
across construction projects, from buildings and bridges to ports and offshore
structures.

49 non-governmental and not-for-profit professional bodies, part of the ICMS Coalition,
came together to bring consistency in construction project cost reporting standards
internationally by creating ICMS 3 through a transparent and inclusive standard-setting
process.

Research from the World Economic Forum has shown that improvements in the design
and construction process can be achieved by using international standards like ICMS to
gain comparable and consistent data.

Through a high-level structure and format for classifying, defining, measuring,
recording, analysing and presenting carbon and other life-cycle costs, ICMS 3 will
contribute positively to efforts to decarbonise the sector in the most cost-effective way.
By bringing much needed transparency and cross-border comparability, the standard
will allow governments, professionals, firms and financial institutions to benchmark
with similar projects around the worlds and have transparency of costs and embodied
and operational carbon across the life cycle of projects. This will further support
sustainable investment strategies in the construction industry, enabling investors to
make informed decisions and support ESG goals.

This tool supports companies in using carbon pricing and assessing climate-related risks and opportunities in the transition to a low-carbon economy.

The Guidelines for Climate Target Setting for Banks outline key principles to underpin the setting of credible, robust, impactful and ambitious targets in line with achieving net zero by 2050 greenhouse gas emissions goals, including these four overarching principles:

1. Banks shall individually and independently set and publicly disclose long-term and intermediate targets to support meeting a net zero by 2050 greenhouse gas emissions goal.
2. Banks shall establish an emissions baseline and annually measure and report the emissions profile of their lending, investment, and capital markets activities.
3. Banks shall use widely accepted science-based decarbonisation scenarios to set both long-term and intermediate targets that are aligned with a net zero by 2050 goal.
4. Banks shall regularly review targets to ensure consistency with current climate science.

NZBA members commit to apply these Guidelines. These Guidelines are also to be applied by members of the Principles for Responsible Banking that have selected climate mitigation as one of their priority impact areas and should set climate targets within four years of joining.

The original version of the Guidelines for Climate Target Setting for Banks, published to coincide with the launch of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance in April 2021, states that the guidelines, ‘…will be reviewed at least every three years.’ To meet this commitment, NZBA banks led a review of the original version of the guidelines from January 2023. A large number of member banks shared their views on what an updated version might look like, informed by their experience of applying the original version of the guidelines, setting and implementing climate targets, and financing transitions in different sectors. Based on these consultations, NZBA developed a new proposed version which the membership voted to adopt in March 2024.

The new version reflects changes in science, regulation, data, and methodologies that took place in the three years since the original version was published. It reinforces the guidelines, further outlining key principles to underpin the setting of credible and ambitious targets in line with achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement. The updated version of the guidelines will apply to all new targets and any new iterations of existing targets set by NZBA member banks after 22 April 2024.

Many investors already measure their climate impact and risks in different ways, such as carbon footprint assessments, fossil reserves analyses, or more forward-looking indicators such as companies’ climate strategies. To turn analysis into action, one needs to distinguish any given investor’s underlying motivation. Investors have many environmental risk mitigation alternatives available depending on their objectives and strategies, this paper contains ten that are recommended as a starting point.

Regulators in Canada and elsewhere are considering regulatory changes to accelerate the transition towards net-zero carbon emissions. Part of that consideration is whether to adopt the TCFD four pillar framework of governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets. We can learn from regulators that have already adopted measures, in particular, the recent activities of the United Kingdom (UK) Government. The UK Government is committed to mandatory climaterelated TCFD-aligned disclosures across the UK economy over a five-year period, including: listed commercial companies, UK-registered companies, banks and building societies, insurance companies, asset managers, and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)-regulated pension schemes.

This briefing note, current to May 2021, highlights the policy rationales for moving to mandatory TCFD-aligned disclosure, sets out the paths the UK Government is taking to make disclosure mandatory across the economy, and raises important considerationsfor regulators in Canada and elsewhere.

Along with a Working Group of 16 international banks convened by the UN Environmental Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), we developed a methodology for assessing risks and opportunities associated with the transition to a low-carbon economy (the “transition-related” impacts associated with climate change). The methodology addresses the Strategy element of the TCFD recommendations around the use of scenario analysis for forward-looking assessments of transition-related impacts.

The key aim of the methodology is to help banks assess the transition-related exposures in their corporate loan portfolios where they may have concerns about the potential policy and technology-related impacts of a low-carbon transition, as well as an appetite to explore and capture associated opportunities.

This paper informs the ongoing debate about how public- and private-sector banks should assess and report on their contribution to the transition toward a low-carbon economy. The research assesses the metrics that can be used to assess a bank’s contribution to the climate solution or problem. The report categorizes the existing metrics into greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting, green or brown, and sector specific metrics; compare these metrics; and make recommendations for choosing metrics by asset class.