For 2021, As You Sow’s work on plastic pollution shifts focus from pressing companies to make plastic packaging more recyclable to using less plastic. Scores of companies have pledged to make their packaging recyclable by 2025; it is time to turn up the temperature and press for more impactful actions like commitments to stop using so much plastic.
Read moreInvestors Recognize Link Between Deforestation and Climate Risk
Deforestation is a climate risk. While conversations about the climate crisis often focus on fossil fuels, investors cannot overlook the risks posed by deforestation and native vegetation conversion in corporate supply chains. To address the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and the risks they pose, corporations and investors must protect tropical and boreal forests, peatlands, grasslands, and other native vegetation.
Read moreBuilding Sector Electrification: Taking Fossil Fuels Out of Our Homes
Power utilities are now taking more ambitious strides on decarbonizing their electric generation business through setting mid-century net-zero GHG emissions targets and implementing major rollouts of solar and wind resources. But the net-zero proclamations for electric generation only cover part of many utilities’ total emissions.
Read moreClean Energy Advocacy is Key to NY State Investment Strategy
In 2020, the New York State Common Retirement Fund (Fund), announced a goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the Fund’s portfolio by 2040. The goal builds on the Fund’s Climate Action Plan 2019. A key component of this initiative is a four year review of investments in energy sector companies, using minimum standards to assess transition readiness and climate-related investment risk, and, where consistent with fiduciary duty, potential divestment of companies that fail to meet minimum standards.
Read moreClimate Change: Follow The Money
As climate-related events hit home with increasing frequency and destruction, the Paris Agreement’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 has begun to resonate throughout the financial system. From climate risk reporting to net-zero commitments, the low carbon economy is gaining traction and speed.
Read moreSay On Climate: Net-Zero with Annual Shareholder Votes – A Global Movement
Carbon emissions resulting in climate change pose increasingly growing material risks to society and corporations. These impacts will reach into every supply chain, capital market, and customer base. A recent study found that more than eight million people died prematurely in 2018 from fossil fuel air pollution. To address these risks and shareholder concerns, companies should establish accredited science-based greenhouse gas reduction targets that adhere to the Paris Agreement and limit global warming to 1.5° Celsius from pre-industrial levels.
Read morePlastic: The New Stranded Asset Risk Facing Big Oil
As the oil and gas industry reckons with the clean energy transition, its emerging plans show one last desperate attempt to cling to continued fossil fuel extraction: a theory of growing global demand for petrochemicals, especially plastics. In a world flooded with plastic waste, however, the proposed expansion of plastic production raises red flags for investors and requires enhanced scrutiny.
Read moreInvestor Climate Support for Climate Action 100+ Net Zero Benchmark
Climate science is clear on the need to reach net-zero global GHG emissions by mid-century to limit global warming to 1.5°C and to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change to communities and the natural world. Net-zero commitments matter to investors because they provide a long-term market and policy signal, reduce regulatory uncertainty, create opportunities for innovations, and give investors confidence that they are developing strategies to address climate risk.
Read moreClimate Action 100+ Targets The 100 Largest Corporate GHG Emitters
The global investor initiative Climate Action 100+ involves more than 440 investors with a combined $39 trillion in assets under management. Investors engage with the 100 largest corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, as well as with 60 other influential companies positioned to drive the low-carbon transition. The initiative’s focus companies are collectively responsible for more than two-thirds of global GHG emissions and through engagement investors already have achieved emissions reductions commitments from numerous companies, including BHP Billiton, Daimler, Duke Energy, Heidelberg Cement, Nestle and VW.
Read moreNatural Gas In The Power Sector: Bridge Fuel Or A Stranded Asset?
As the window of opportunity to prevent catastrophic climate change narrows, natural gas has been lauded by many in the power sector as a “bridge” from high-carbon coal to a low-carbon future. Indeed, gas has been an important step on the path of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping to move the power sector away from coal. However, natural gas is still a fossil fuel that generates considerable climate impacts, both through methane leakage across the supply chain from production to use, as well as direct combustion emissions. To achieve a safe level of climate stabilization and to protect investor portfolio exposure from global climate risks, the bridge of natural gas and its associated emissions must have a clear end.
Read moreBig Banks Must Take Responsibility For Their Own Climate Footprints
As climate-related harm accelerates, economy-wide losses are increasing and posing growing risk not only to the individual companies in which shareholders invest but, significantly, to their entire portfolios. A 2018 analysis in Nature found that limiting global warming at 1.5°C versus 2°C will save $20 trillion globally by 2100. Failure to maintain warming below 2°C will cost the economy vastly more.
Read moreRenewable Energy And Energy Efficiency = Clean Energy Future
Over the past several years, investors have increasingly focused on clean energy as a way for companies to mitigate climate risk and take advantage of opportunities as we transition to a low-carbon economy. In the absence of strong legislative action, corporate commitments are crucial in reaching the levels of decarbonization necessary to keep warming under 1.5°C .
Read moreVerizon Heeds Shareholder Call To Source More Renewable Energy
When Green Century first engaged Verizon Communications, the company sourced 2 percent of its energy from renewable sources—and had a goal to increase that amount to 4 percent by 2025.
Read moreThe Beverage Recycling Conundrum
The beverage container touches many industries, upstream and downstream, and presents logistical and environmental challenges at each step. ClearBridge takes a life cycle approach to the beverage container’s challenges, finding that there are several entry points for action that can reduce environmental impact.
Read moreStarbucks Signals Historic Shift From Single-Use Cups And Plastics To Reusable Packaging
An estimated eight million tons of plastics are swept into oceans annually. Plastic beverage containers are among the most common items found in beach cleanups. In 2008, Starbucks pledged that, by 2015, it would serve 25 percent of beverages in reusable containers like ceramic mugs. Ten years later, the company had little to show for its efforts, with less than 2 percent of beverages served in reusable cups.
Read moreA Lighter Chemical Footprint Sought For Consumer Goods, Health Care, Technology Sectors
Materiality of chemicals in products is well established in the Sustainable Accounting Standard Board’s (SASB) standards for Consumer Goods, Health Care, and Technology & Communications. These standards reflect rising demand from consumers and institutional purchasers for safer products and growing evidence of the harmful effects of toxic chemicals, including a peer-reviewed study showing that toxic chemicals cost the world 10 percent of annual global gross domestic product, $11 trillion a year in disease burdens. Yet companies in these sectors have been slow to assess and reduce the chemical footprint of their products.
Read moreRegenerative Agriculture Takes Root Among Food Manufacturers
Food manufacturers have a critical role to play in sustainable food systems. As major purchasers of commodity crops, these companies wield immense power to shift the way food is grown. Some, such as Kellogg and General Mills, are starting to use that power to drive positive change after persistent shareholder pressure.
Read more2020 Could Be Pivotal Year For Sustainability Accounting Standards
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) was formed in 2011 to formulate social and environmental disclosure standards in line with definitions of financial materiality under U.S. securities laws. Financial materiality is a critical feature from the standpoint of mainstream investors, as many of them construe their fiduciary responsibilities to mean that any engagement or voting effort directed toward ESG issues must have monetary benefits for their customers.
Read moreInvestors Drive Market Forces For Progress On Antibiotics In Factory Animal Farming
The meat and poultry industries have made significant progress in tackling antibiotic resistance over the past four years, encouraged by persistent shareholder engagement on this critical issue.
Read moreElectric Vehicles Drive Shift To Low Carbon Economy
As companies consider how to reduce their emissions to comply with the goals of the Paris Climate Treaty, they can look to electric vehicles as a feasible option. Carbon emissions from vehicles contribute significantly to global warming, and the transportation sector is one of the larger contributors to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in the U.S. As institutional investors seek to offset and mitigate the rising levels of carbon and other GHGs, electric vehicles (EVs) are an increasingly viable solution. With sales of EVs growing faster than predicted a few short years ago, the outlook for EV production and adoption is becoming increasingly robust.
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