On Thursday, December 16th, Axios energy reporter Ben Geman and business reporter Hope King dove into the forces driving investments in climate tech and looked ahead to the ESG trends shaping the market for 2022, featuring Moody’s Climate Solutions global head Emilie Mazzacurati and S&P Global Sustainable1 president Richard Mattison.
Emilie Mazzacurati discussed the most tangible outcomes from the COP26 climate conference, how these outcomes will impact sustainable investment, and how to ensure corporate sustainability commitments are actually implemented.
- On the impact of companies setting forth climate pledges: “Setting aside those technical aspects, we found that even the companies that have set targets are not going far enough and that if all those companies reduced emissions, they would be on track supportive of a world going towards 2.1 degrees Celsius on average. So still well above where we want to be.”
- On transparency to prevent corporate greenwashing: “So the type of things that we might look at over and beyond the actual targets themselves are governance. Is there a board-level oversight of climate risk? What’s the role of the management? Is climate integrated into risk management?”
Richard Mattison described the state of the current climate investment environment, the makeup of upcoming standard disclosure requirements, and the best and worst case scenarios in measuring companies’ progress on their sustainability commitments.
- On the need for more specificity in climate investment pledges: “I don’t think we really have enough understanding of what the near-term plans need to look like. We don’t even know what a good transition plan looks like…I think there’s a never before seen scale of collaboration, in particular between banks, asset managers, and companies on really what a good transition plan looks like towards net zero.”
- On best case scenarios for progress on sustainability commitments: “There is robustness and credibility in the processes used to gather that information and interpret that information. And that process means that the information is actually at the core of a scale flow of capital towards sustainable outcomes, and that we are starting to see a real difference in the real world with respect to some of those climate disasters that I was talking about before.”
Axios HQ General Manager Jordan Zaslav hosted a View from the Top segment with Head of iShares Americas at Blackrock, Armando Senra, who spoke on the impact of ESG commitments on the investment landscape.
- “When you think of ESG, environmental, social, and corporate governance, those factors have a real impact in asset pricing in capital allocations. And therefore, what is really important there is to understand that as you’re building your portfolio, this is not just about your values or your preferences. This is about the outcomes that you are expecting in your portfolio and how you have to account for the impact and the opportunities that these factors will have in your portfolio.”
Thank you iShares for sponsoring this event.