This is the first time a superfund has been sued for not doing enough on climate change. Who will be next?
Climate Change Strengthens Earth's 'Heartbeat' — and That's Bad News | Space.com
Financing a resilient and sustainable economy | RIAA, IGCC, PRI, UNEP SI and UNEP FI
Joint Statement calls on the finance sector to support the development of Sustainable Finance Roadmaps for Australia and New Zealand
The Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA) has today joined with the Investor Group on Climate Change, the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), the UN Environment’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance, and the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) – collectively representing over 300 institutions with $10 trillion in assets – to sign a joint statement that commits to starting the development of Sustainable Finance Roadmaps for Australia and New Zealand.
We are now encouraging RIAA members and the wider finance sector in Australia and New Zealand to join with us in support of this commitment to develop Sustainable Finance Roadmaps by signing the Joint Statement in support of a Sustainable Financial System, released at the UNEP FI Conference on Financing a Resilient and Sustainable Economy in Sydney today.
Get in touch to express your interest in supporting the Joint Statement here
The organisations that have convened this statement commit to convene finance, government, civil society and consumer bodies to kick-start the process to develop Sustainable Finance Roadmaps for Australia and New Zealand.
We will now open this statement up to other organisations to sign on to show their support of this commitment to develop Sustainable Finance Roadmaps and to participate in the process.
A Sustainable Finance Roadmap is a set of recommendations across policy, regulation and finance practices that helps the finance sector contribute systematically to a more resilient and sustainable economy. From the European Union to China, a growing number of regions and countries globally have developed Sustainable Finance Roadmaps to help achieve national, regional and global sustainable development goals.
You can read the RIAA’s briefing paper on Sustainable Finance Roadmaps produced for the conference here.
The Sustainable Finance Roadmaps build on RIAA’s work to date identifying key priorities for shaping more sustainable finance markets in Australasia, as outlined in our paper: Driving Long-term Investment and Delivering Responsible Financial Markets.
Two-thirds of Aussie drivers will own an EV by 2028, Jaguar says | Renew Economy
"If Jaguar’s forecasts are correct, this means Australian car dealers could be selling an average of 1.2 million EV or PHEV cars per year over the next 10 years, around double what is anticipated by AEMO."
Ireland votes to divest from fossil fuels within 5 years | Renew Economy
Curb new nuclear plants and back renewables, government advisers say | Reuters
One of the World's Biggest Insurers Is Ditching Coal | Earther
Earlier this week, one of the biggest re-insurance companies in the world started implementing a policy reflecting the growing risk around new coal projects. Swiss Re announced on Monday it would no longer insure companies that get 30 percent of their revenue or generate 30 percent of their power from coal burned for energy (known in energy parlance as ‘thermal coal’).
Munich Re sticks with coal underwriting despite investor pressure | Reuters
Yes, your energy bills are too high. Here's how the ACCC thinks prices can be slashed | The ABC
The consumer watchdog believes Australians are paying too much for their electricity. A lack of competition in the energy market and policy mistakes by successive state and federal governments has added significant costs to power bills, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
"We've got a lot of costs imposed into the system, the market's too concentrated and we've had some unfortunate behaviour by retailers."
Here's a link to the ACCC media release and you can find the ACCC report here.
Ex-IPCC Vice-Chair: EU contribution to Paris goals is ‘unambitious and outdated’ | Euractiv
The European Union needs to “significantly improve its policy package” for 2030 in order to align itself with the emission trajectories of the Paris Agreement, according to renowned Belgian climate scientist Jean-Pascal van Ypersele.
Screws tighten on thermal coal as Swiss Re pulls plug | Financial Review
Swiss Re, the world's second largest reinsurer, has pulled the plug on underwriting policies for companies with more than 30 per cent of thermal coal in their mining or power-generation portfolios, further tightening the screws on a fuel which is paradoxically enjoying buoyant demand in Asia
Red-hot planet: All-time heat records have been set all over the world during the past week | Washington Post
'Unacceptable': Energy grid 'gaming' cost Australian consumers $3.4 billion | AFR
Mostly working: Australia’s wholesale electricity market | The Grattan Institute
High electricity prices are here to stay, according to a new Grattan Institute report that calls on politicians to tell Australians the truth about the future of energy costs.
Climate Horizons Report 2018 | Centre for Policy Development
"Climate change is not some distant threat. It is a global tragedy unfolding before our eyes, disrupting ecosystems, communities and economies. For companies, investors and financiers the risks and opportunities are immediate and pressing. The expectations of markets and policymakers on emissions reduction targets and adaptation measures are ramping up. Customers, shareholders and regulators demand increasingly sophisticated responses. If Australian businesses and company directors fail to react urgently and coherently, then they will jeopardise their own future: assets will be stranded or uninsurable, investment will stall, debts will go unpaid, and companies will collapse.” Download the full report here
$200 billion clean energy financing commitment | JP Morgan Chase
Climate Alliance Newsletter - August 2017
Business pleas for government to back Finkel Review | AFR
Australia's business leaders have pleaded for politicians to fall in behind a market-based energy policy built on the Finkel Review's clean energy target to underwrite investment certainty and scathingly dismissed proposals for government to fund a coal fired power station as an answer to high energy prices.
Two of the most powerful figures in Australia's energy sector - former Origin Energy boss Grant King and Energy Australia managing director Catherine Tanna - have said no one in politics has clean hands on past energy policy.
During the BCA's roundtable discussion with the Australian Financial Review, Ms Tanna said that "nobody has a licence to go around and say that the market is working for customers as intended", because energy prices were so high.
But with a push underway within the federal government to provide support for the coal industry, and for government direct investment in a coal-fired power station, the BCA board was asked where coal should fit in to energy policy.
"The first thing I would say about that is coal is a legacy technology," Ms Tanna said.
"I'm not saying that it can't be part of the future mix. I'm just saying that it's a solution that my grandfather would have built.
"I think it is very, very unlikely to find a market participant that will fund such a new investment."
ESG: The climate conundrum | Investments & Pensions Europe
Had Exxon Mobil reported its reserves differently in 2016, investors might have taken a another view of the company’s future trajectory. The company reported its Kearl oil sands as reserves, and in 2016 was ordered to debook them by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). An important shift in its disclosures ensued in March 2017, with proved reserves cut by 3.3bn oil-equivalent barrels.
In October 2016 the company admitted that, under the SEC definition of proven reserves, certain quantities of oil, such as those associated with the Kearl oil sands operation in Canada, would not qualify as proven reserves at the end of the year.
According to Tarek Soliman, senior analyst at the CDP, a non-governmental organisation based in the UK, the systematic practice of considering climate-related risk would have resulted in a different disclosure. It would transform investor perceptions if replicated across the whole oil and gas sector. “If the company were to integrate climate risk into its assessments, it would highlight that these assets show a high propensity to become impaired. They would have been downgraded to a resource rather than a reserve, and this problem would have been foreseen,” says Soliman.
Comment: Could climate cause the next financial crisis? | IPE, Paul Fisher
Tail risks have an unfortunate habit of becoming reality. That was one of the clearest lessons of the 2008 financial crisis – an event that I lived through and had to deal with, as a senior figure in the Bank of England’s markets department.
The financial sector is all about risk. Taking it. Avoiding it. Monitoring, measuring, and limiting it. And, crucially, making money from it. When the improbable actually happened, ‘safe’ AAA-rated assets became junk, liquid markets dried up, the trust that oiled the financial system evaporated and we had to take the most extraordinary measures in response.
But new risks are emerging around climate change that are poorly understood, hard to manage and, at the extreme, pose threats to the financial system not unlike those we faced in 2008.