[author: Mark Thomsen]
The world is warming. How will that impact your company’s business?
The macroeconomic costs of climate change and climate-related disasters will continue to rise alongside global temperatures. Individual businesses can expect to experience further interruptions of essential services and supply chains as existing infrastructure buckles under the weight of extreme weather events around the world.
But businesses shouldn’t just be focused on supply chains when calculating the value of their sustainability efforts. Environmentally conscious investors have grown more interested in backing firms that actively measure and audit their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices and processes. Regulators are also raising their reporting requirements, furthering transparency into an organization’s environmental impact and mitigation actions. Failure to improve these efforts can do increasing damage to a business’ brand, resulting in lost customers and
Climate Action 100+: Nine out of 10 corporates exclude indirect emissions from climate goals
Climate Action 100+ is the the world’s largest ever investor engagement initiative on climate change
Update from investor-backed campaign calls on companies to better account for their indirect emissions in corporate climate goals
Net zero pledges may have snowballed across the private sector over the past year, but the world s most polluting companies need to significantly strenghten their decarbonisation efforts to deliver the emissions reductions required to meet global climate goals.
That is the top line conclusion of a major report published this morning by the investor-backed Climate Action 100+ group, which reveals that while nearly half the world s most carbon-intensive companies have now pledged to deliver net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest, the majority of firms choose to exclude a major portion of their greenhouse gas emissions from their carbon calculations.
A two-day conference of the 54 parties to the Energy Charter Treaty, opening on Wednesday (16 December), will attempt to move forward in reforming the little-known charter, decried by environmentalists for protecting fossil fuel investments and blocking international efforts to curb global warming.
After three negotiation rounds in 2020, national delegations have come to “a greater understanding of the topics” at hand and exchanged “initial impressions” about how to address them, according to a leaked progress report obtained by EURACTIV.
But even though some progress was made on the definition of legal concepts like “investment” or “fair and equitable treatment”, critics say talks have been stalled by the Treaty’s requirement to take decisions by unanimity.
UK backing for fossil fuel projects set to end | Biofuels International Magazine biofuels-news.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from biofuels-news.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
EU ministers attending the Energy Charter Conference on 16-17 December should work on the collective withdrawal from the ECT if other contracting parties oppose the phase-out of fossil fuels from the treaty’s binding provisions, argues Dr Saheb.
Dr Yamina Saheb is a senior climate and energy policy analyst at OpenExp, a Paris-based think tank, and a former head of the Energy Efficiency Unit at the Energy Charter Secretariat.
Most Europeans do not know much, if anything, about the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT). They should. The ECT is arguably the most powerful instrument working against Europe’s climate objectives and leadership. The European council has committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 and to ensure that EU