Resource Database

The overwhelming majority of top listed companies in the UK are woefully inadequate at disclosing in corporate reporting how climate change will affect their business – with many potentially breaching the law – a new study shows.

Existing UK laws require all large companies to disclose material information about their climate change-related risks and impacts.

Clear investor demand means that companies must provide a detailed picture of how their business is positioned as the global economy shifts towards ‘net-zero’ greenhouse gas emissions, including how it will impact their strategy, long term viability and balance sheet. Company auditors must also sign off on their work.

To see how firms and auditors meet this demand, lawyers reviewed the entire FTSE 100 and the largest 150 companies on the FTSE 250, studied each company’s most recent annual report, and developed a quantitative assessment of how company disclosures match up against existing disclosure requirements.

This is the 11th edition of the KPMG Survey of Sustainability Reporting since the first edition was published in 1993. This year, KPMG professionals reviewed sustainability reporting from 5,200 companies in 52 countries and jurisdictions, making this the most extensive survey in the series to date.

The survey provides a detailed look at global trends in sustainability reporting and offers insights for business leaders, company boards and sustainability professionals. Its aim is to support those who have a responsibility for assessing and preparing their own organization’s sustainability reporting.

The survey also serves as a guide to investors, asset managers and ratings agencies who now factor sustainability or Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) information into their assessment of corporate performance and risk.

It is based on several months of research by sustainability professionals at KPMG firms who analyzed thousands of corporate reports and websites.

Assesses the quality and usefulness of narrative and financial reporting on climate-related risks and opportunities in the UK, and provides various learnings, including useful examples of good practice and common areas of unhelpful or erroneous reporting.

This Ceres report outlines how and why U.S. financial regulators, who are responsible for protecting the stability and competitiveness of the U.S. economy, need to recognize and act on climate change as a systemic risk. It provides more than 50 recommendations for key financial regulators to adopt, including the Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC), state and federal insurance regulators, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), and the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC).

This report summarises the main results of a stocktake conducted by the Basel Committee of its members’ initiatives on climate-related financial risks.

The survey suggests that the majority of Basel Committee members consider it appropriate to address climate-related financial risks within their existing regulatory and supervisory frameworks. An overwhelmingly large share of members have conducted research related to the measurement of climate-related financial risks, while a number of members identified operational challenges in assessing climate-related financial risks such as data availability, methodological challenges, and difficulties in mapping of transmission channels. A majority of the members have raised risk awareness with banks through different channels, and many banks are disclosing information related to climate-related financial risks to some extent. Approximately two-fifths of members have issued, or are in process of issuing, more principles-based guidance regarding climate-related financial risks. However, the majority of members have not factored, or have not yet considered factoring, the mitigation of such risks into the prudential capital framework.

The Directive 2014/95/EU on the Disclosure of Non-Financial and Diversity Information the (NFR Directive) requires certain large companies to disclose information on their business models, policies, risks and outcomes as regards to environmental matters, social and employee aspects, respect for human rights, anti-corruption and bribery issues, and diversity in their board of directors. This Handbook follows on from CDSB and CDP’s First Steps review of corporate climate and environmental disclosure and is designed to demonstrate how companies have responded to the NFR Directive. The Handbook contains annotated examples of disclosures on environmental matters from annual reports of select European companies, and demonstrates links between the NFR Directive and the TCFD recommendations.

The Climate Risk Governance team at MinterEllison outline the most significant developments in climate risk governance over the past year, and looks ahead to what is in store for 2020 and beyond. Not only are these trends continuing, but the focus on climate risk will increase significantly with two key factors at play. Domestically, the profound devastation and destruction caused by the bushfires will keep climate change in the collective Australian consciousness and put renewed pressure on governments and businesses to act. Internationally, in the lead up to the COP26 in Glasgow in December 2020, the most important international climate change conference for five years, international governments with ambitious climate policies will put pressure on perceived laggard countries with trade levers on the horizon that may directly affect Australian businesses.

The world cannot wait for the fog of geopolitical and geo-economic uncertainty to lift. Opting to ride out the current period in the hope that the global system will “snap back” runs the risk of missing crucial windows to address pressing challenges. On key issues such as the economy, the environment, technology and public health, stakeholders must find ways to act quickly and with purpose within an unsettled global landscape. This is the context in which the World Economic Forum publishes the 15th edition of the Global Risks Report. This year environmental issues, including climate change, are highlighted as the top risks that need to be addressed.

CPA Canada convened a roundtable of Canadian finance and investor relations professionals from the mining sector to share views on growing investor requests for climate-related information. Read the report to learn about what we heard.

The TMX and CPA Canada convened a roundtable of Canadian finance and investor relations professionals from the energy sector to share views on growing investor requests for climate-related information. Read thereport to learn what we heard.

Scenario analysis is an essential yet challenging component of TCFD disclosure and of understanding and preparing for the impacts of climate change on assets, markets and economies. Many climate impacts are already locked in to mid-century, so when focusing on the next few decades scenario analysis should focus on the scientific phenomenon driving uncertainty, rather than the climate policies which have a greater impact over the longer term. This report, Demystifying Climate Scenario Analysis for Financial Stakeholders, explores which impacts are already locked in, identifies how Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios fit into the conversation, and describes an approach to setting up scenario analysis for near-term physical climate risks.

Our atmosphere will continue to warm for many decades even if we stop emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow. The oceans will continue to rise, heat waves will become more severe and droughts will intensify. . This report outlines an approach called percentile-based analysis, which allows users to explore the range of potential outcomes based on climate model outputs within a single RCP.

The purpose of this Investor Briefing is to educate investors on how to think about physical climate impacts in their investment and portfolio management decisions, as well as to help investors identify burgeoning opportunities to proactively invest in adaptation and resilience. This briefing seeks to foster climate adaptation and resilience as a mainstream consideration in financial management for asset owners, investors, insurers, and lenders.