Resource Database

The webinar looks at how companies can use the TCFD recommendations to maximise the opportunities associated with the low-carbon transition.

Sustainability challenges like climate change, water scarcity and human rights abuses put people, the planet and the global economy at risk — and corporate boards have a critical role to play in driving the solutions we need to tackle these challenges with urgency and at scale.

So how can corporate boards oversee their companies in a way that ensures they are leading the way on sustainability?

To answer this question, we evaluated the board systems of the world’s largest companies and showcased the results in our newly released report, Systems Rule: How board governance can drive sustainability performance. We found that companies with robust systems for board oversight are better positioned for sustainability performance.

However, we found that while most large global companies say that their boards oversee sustainability, their systems are largely piecemeal. Our analysis also shows that companies with systematic approaches to board governance — including the right mandates, the right people and the right incentives like executive compensation — perform best on key sustainability measures.

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.

This document hopes to stimulate further and more detailed discussions between policymakers and business leaders on how best to implement the carbon price so that it can incentivize low-carbon innovation and investment, create a global level playing field and support the attainment of the UNFCCC 2°C goal in a sustainable way.

This report builds on WBCSD’s Corporate Renewable Power Purchase Agreements: Scaling up globally report (October 2016), which provides background on corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs). The initial report includes the opportunities that PPAs offer, the obstacles corporate buyers and developers face as they plan and negotiate PPAs and potential solutions to challenges.

The CEO Guide lays out the business case for water, outlining physical and non-physical water-related risks and presents significant business opportunities connected to water, including increased resilience and market growth.

This study updates the report "2 Degrees of Separation", and for the first time quantifies risk of overinvestment under a 1.75ᵒC scenario using International Energy Agency’s - Beyond 2 Degrees Scenario, Sustainable Development Scenario and New Policies Scenario.

This by CDSB paper focuses on IFRS 7, 9, 15, 17 and IAS 36 and 37, exploring some of the main points applied to traditional financial instruments and how they could help organizations report information about climate-related risks and opportunities in their mainstream report.

A quick guide to help understand the disclosure expectations and examples from early adopters.

This webinar, hosted by CDSB, provides an overview of why including climate change related-risks in financial disclosures is becoming more mainstream, and what this might mean for the accounting profession.

The French Association of Private Enterprises (AFEP) asked the think tank The Shift Project to conduct an analysis of stakeholders in climate risk assessment, their choice of methodologies and key market trends. The aim was to help companies to more clearly understand the environment in which they were developing in terms of climate risk analysis. This document explains the main lessons learned from the study, which includes: 1. Traditionally considered within the broader framework of environmental, social and governance (ESG) analysis, the climate component is increasingly being singled out in the work of risk analysis and ratings officers. It is expected to continue being singularised in this way owing to its fundamentally systemic, irreversible, global and very-long term dimension; 2. Despite marked progress, the scope of the “climate rating” remains limited. The climate risk is only slowly and partially being integrated into the mainstream analyses and studies of major financial ratings agencies. The utilisation of analyses conducted by non-financial ratings agencies focuses on assets for which there is specific demand from a small minority of end-investors (green bonds, SRI funds, “low carbon” indices). 3. The climate rating sector, like the ESG sector as a whole, lacks resources, resulting in (i) slower integration of the systemic risks related to climate change; (ii) less R&D in that field; (iii) the promotion of oversimplified or automated analysis; (iv) potential governance problems that damage confidence among stakeholders. 4. Analysing the risks and opportunities related to “low carbon” strategies depends on the development of expertise and the mobilisation of human resources and investment, which are currently inadequate. In addition to evaluating direct or indirect greenhouse gas emissions, analysis methodologies must increasingly take into account how dynamic and forward-looking deployed strategies are. 5. There is a temptation to implement oversimplified methodologies for the assessment of investment portfolios in the financial sector. The use of such static, reductive and methodologically fragile analyses should constitute only a single step in the actual integration of the climate risk by markets. 6. While the climate issue is destined to become ever more central, in France remarkable consensus is emerging in political and economic spheres on the gravity of the matter, which could give rise to a long-term national ambition. In addition to largely decarbonised power generation and proactive legislation, France has a number of assets to help it overcome the climate challenge and become a leader of the low-carbon economy of the future in Europe and internationally.

This webinar explored the issue of materiality in climate-related disclosures, following from the release of a new discussion paper (Materiality and climate-related financial disclosures - CDSB).