ESG In Pills - April 2023
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A Review of Carbon Credits
If you've ever read a dubious "our business is carbon neutral" advertisement and asked yourself how it was possible, they probably have used offsetting to support the claim.
This month South Pole, the world’s leading purveyor of offsets, has faced allegations that it exaggerated climate claims around its forest-protection projects. South Pole’s business model is helping finance projects that can credibly counteract rising levels of greenhouse gas, such as by stopping deforestation, and then?sell the resulting credit to corporate clients who want to compensate for their planet-warming pollution. The uncertainty is having rippling effects on how legions of companies try to slash their emissions.
What are carbon credits?
Carbon dioxide has the same impact on the climate no matter where it is emitted and what the source is, so if a tonne of carbon dioxide can be absorbed from the atmosphere in one part of the world, it should cancel out a tonne of the gas emitted in another. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air as they grow and store it, making forests one of the biggest carbon sinks. So, in theory, companies and individuals can cancel out the impact of some of their emissions by investing in projects that reduce or store carbon – forest preservation and tree planting are among them. Still, carbon credits are also awarded for projects that reduce fossil fuels in other ways, such as wind farms, solar cookstoves, or better farming methods.
Companies should not use carbon credits as an excuse to put off the systemic reforms to our energy generation and usage that are urgently needed – ultimately, we must?reduce emissions drastically ?to prevent catastrophe and offsetting alone will never achieve that. To opponents, carbon credits and carbon trading are a?distraction while we dither over the systemic reforms. To supporters, offsetting and the sale of carbon credits produce a flow of money to developing countries to help them preserve carbon sinks and build their economies along low-carbon lines.
South Pole Case Study
South Pole’s biggest moneymaker is a mega-project in Zimbabwe called Kariba, which the offsetting company claimed has?prevented the annihilation of a forest nearly the size of Puerto Rico. Yet according to several outside experts and South Pole's analysis , the firm and its partner ended up vastly overestimating?the extent of the preservation by Kariba. As a result, Gucci, Nestle, McKinsey, and other South Pole clients have overstated their progress in combating climate change because the Kariba credits they bought have not generated enough real atmospheric benefit.
Recent financial details released by South Pole make these flawed credits even more troubling to some customers. Most of Kariba’s €100 million in proceeds have gone to South Pole and its project partner, a company called Carbon Green Investments, not — as both companies previously indicated in interviews and?public blog posts ?—?to people in the rural communities who do the work of fighting deforestation.?
The uncertainty about South Pole’s flagship project could influence how legions of companies try to slash their emissions. Companies have bought 23 million credits from Kariba, enough to offset more than half of Switzerland’s annual emissions. Purchases of carbon credits quadrupled in 2021 to $2 billion, according to Ecosystem Marketplace. But?persistent questions ?about their benefits have?damaged their reputation ?as a legitimate climate solution.
Due mainly to this "growing criticism of carbon offsets," corporations used 4% fewer credits in 2022, according to researchers at BloombergNEF. Even airlines, among the biggest buyers of offsets, are seeking alternatives. Delta Air Lines, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on carbon credits, some from Kariba, has joined JetBlue, EasyJet and others to prioritise other emission-cutting methods ?instead.
Beyond South Pole – A Systemic Failing in the Market?
Researchers led by Barbara Haya from the University of Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy assessed the methods underpinning forestry projects responsible for 11% of all carbon offsets ever issued. They found shortcomings in each that resulted in bogus credits.
"Across the board, they fall far short of good practice in carbon accounting," Haya said. "It's pervasive." The study, the first of its type, was published Tuesday?in the journal ?Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. Haya's team found that the registries' methods failed to uphold basic criteria to ensure projects make a real difference to carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. That includes providing their carbon credits funded tree-protecting activities that wouldn't have otherwise happened and making a reasonable baseline assessment of that alternate future.
Developers also have to address if they are displacing harmful activities elsewhere and should account for risks such as wildfires. For example, the researchers found that most of the credits they studied had been generated against a baseline of aggressive harvesting practices that didn't align with past practices in the area. That meant developers could be credited for operating as usual rather than for improvement.
The shortcomings lead to the conclusion that companies cannot easily rely on offsets generated using these methods to make claims of carbon neutrality or climate advances.
Haya said her team's findings amount to a systemic failure in the market. The challenge of placing a precise number on how much carbon is saved to generate each offset sold impacts all projects, not just forest management. Last year, a Bloomberg investigation found that almost 40% of the offsets purchased in 2021 came from renewable energy projects that did not avoid emissions. “Offsetting is a misnomer — you can't ‘offset’ your emissions,” she said. “We need alternative ways of supporting climate mitigation because the current offset market is deeply not working.”
Chart of the month
You can read more on the ESG backclash in the US here .
Environment
EU Backs Fossil Fuel Phaseout Ahead of Cop28
Ministers from the 27 EU member states approved a text on their diplomatic priorities ahead of the COP28 summit on November 30 in Dubai, where nearly 200 countries will attempt to boost a global deal that?failed ?at last year's summit. "The shift towards a climate-neutral economy will require the global phaseout of unabated fossil fuels," the EU text said, citing the scientific consensus that this is necessary to avoid more severe climate change. "The EU will systematically promote and call for a global move towards energy systems free of unabated fossil fuels well ahead of 2050", it said, adding that global fossil fuel consumption should peak in the near term. The text said countries should combine the two aims and use renewable energy or energy savings - rather than fossil fuels - to?replace Russian energy. This proceeds in parallel to new initiatives within the EU. March also saw the European Commission proposing a Net-Zero Industry Act, setting a target for 40 per cent of the EU's clean tech to be built inside the bloc by 2030. The 40% target, still in the process of approval, is part of Europe's answer to the US Inflation Reduction Act ?(IRA), which offers $369bn of subsidies to green-tech manufacturers, as well as China’s long-running policy of lavish state support for the sector. Speaking in Davos in January, Von der Leyen said it was no secret that the US Inflation Reduction Act had "raised several concerns". "We Europeans also need to get better at nurturing our clean-tech industry," she told the Davos audience.
A wave of Climate Losses for Meat & Diary Industries
Forty of the world’s largest livestock producers may?collectively see profits fall by almost $24 billion in 2030 from 2020 levels due to climate change, according to an estimate by the large investor?group FAIRR. The data indicate that those in North America, including Tyson Foods Inc.?and egg producer?Cal-Maine Foods Inc., will be among the hardest hit as profit margins fall by 11% on average. Large meat producers, such as Brazil's JBS SA?and China’s?WH Group Ltd., will also be affected. Under a 2C increase temperature by 2100 scenario, and without mitigation, half of the 40 livestock companies assessed would be operating at a loss in 2030. Livestock producers are vulnerable because the supply of feed crops such as maise and soybeans can be affected by excess heat, drought and shifting rainfall patterns. Only six of the 40 companies analysed have conducted climate scenario analyses. The potential hit to industry profits is driven mainly by higher climate-related costs, which should increase by over 9% on average, according to FAIRR. Of that increase, 5% relates to higher feed prices and 4% to expected carbon taxes on livestock emissions. No country has yet imposed a carbon tax on agriculture, though carbon-pricing mechanisms for emissions in other industries have become more popular. New Zealand, where half of all emissions emanate from agriculture, is among the first countries to propose a levy on agricultural emissions.
An Agreement to Save our Oceans
Until now, fragmented and loosely enforced rules governing the high seas have rendered this area more susceptible than coastal waters to exploitation. After almost 20 years of talks, United Nations member states agreed on a legal framework for parts of the ocean outside national boundaries. The historic treaty is crucial for enforcing the 30x30 pledge made by countries at the?UN biodiversity conference in December to protect a third of the sea (and land) by 2030. Without a treaty, this target would undoubtedly fail, as until now, no legal mechanism existed to set up MPAs on the high seas. Covering almost two-thirds of the ocean that lies outside national boundaries, the treaty will provide a legal framework for establishing vast marine protected areas (MPAs) to protect against the loss of wildlife and share out the genetic resources of the high seas. “What happens on the high seas will no longer be ‘out of sight, out of mind,” said Jessica Battle of WWF in a statement after leading the group’s team at the negotiations. This historic win coincides with many countries calling to delay plans to strip-mine the seabed ?for metals to make electric car batteries. And as US defence giant Lockheed Martin Corp., the biggest corporate player in deep sea mining, exits the nascent industry. “The ocean’s health, people and natural ecosystems are already reeling from pollution, overfishing, acidification and extreme weather events,” said Hinano Murphy of French Polynesia, one of the indigenous representatives from the Pacific, who believes a ban on deep sea mining will see the chance to stop the needless damage before it starts.
Social
Grave Child Labour Scandal in the US
A conveyor belt carried bags of Cheerios past a cluster of young workers. One was 15-year-old Carolina Yoc, who came to the United States last year to live with a relative she had never met. Charlene Irizarry, the human resources manager at Farm Fresh Foods, an Alabama meat plant that struggles to retain staff, recently realised she was interviewing a 12-year-old for a job slicing chicken breasts into nuggets in a section of the factory kept at 40 degrees. Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States ?without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found. They bake dinner rolls sold at Walmart and Target, process milk used in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and help debone chicken sold at Whole Foods.?In Michigan, children make auto parts used by Ford and General Motors. The Department of Health and Human Services ensures that sponsors support and protect kids from trafficking or exploitation. But as more and more children have arrived, the Biden White House has ramped up demands on staffers to move them quickly out of shelters and release them to adults. Data from The Times showed that the agency HHS could not reach more than 85,000 children over the last two years. Overall, it lost immediate contact with a third of migrant children. Federal law bars minors from a long list of dangerous jobs. But these jobs — gruelling, poorly paid, and thus chronically short-staffed — are precisely where many migrant children end up. Reviewing state and federal safety records and public reports, The Times found a dozen cases of young migrant workers killed since 2017, the last year the Labor Department reported any. In dairy production, the injury rate is twice the national average across all industries.
Call For Public Ownership of UK Transition
Workers in the UK’s offshore oil, gas and renewables sector have called for public ownership of energy companies to ensure that the country’s transition to net zero protects jobs, communities and the environment. The call comes amid a series of demands to the government from a coalition of offshore workers, unions and climate campaigners that aim to shift the industry from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources. A survey of 1,092 offshore workers for the wide-ranging report, Our Power: Offshore Workers, found that 90% of respondents backed its demands, which also include: government-backed jobs guarantees, an offshore training passport that supports workers to retrain in the renewables sector, a commitment to incentivise investment in ports and factories making products such as wind turbines; and equal pay for migrant workers. Workers also call for a windfall tax to be made permanent, strengthened grievance processes, and a sovereign wealth fund. Friends of the Earth Scotland’s head of campaigns, Mary Church, said: "Failure from politicians to properly plan and support the transition to renewables is leaving workers adrift on the whims of oil and gas companies, and the planet to burn." The National Audit Office, the government spending watchdog,?warned last week? that ministers' efforts to tackle the energy bills crisis had left the UK at risk of missing a target to source all electricity from low-carbon sources by 2035.
Water Scarcity in Colorado Demands Agricultural Reduction
Colorado is trying to solve the increasingly desperate drought ?in the West, where?the Colorado River serves 40 million people. The US Bureau of Reclamation is looking at paying farmers to idle some fields, many in the vast Imperial Valley in California and Yuma County in Arizona, that grow much of the nation's winter vegetables and rely on the river. Funding would come from $4 billion for Western drought aid in the Inflation Reduction Act. "Given the volume of water that is used by agriculture in the Colorado River system, you can't stabilise the system without reductions in agriculture," said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources. “That’s just math.” Agriculture uses 70% and 80% of the Colorado River's water, and ideas for reducing that have long been contentious. Farmers and the irrigators who serve them say their water use is justified since nearly the entire country eats the produce grown in the region and meat from cattle fed on the grasses grown locally. Water officials from cities and other states with less demand from farms say agriculture's large take from the river allows wasteful farming practices to continue even as water grows scarcer. Tina Shields, water manager for the Imperial Irrigation District, advises farmers first to save water through efficiencies like drip irrigation, choosing less water-intensive crops, and using water sensors to cut waste. But she acknowledged that the fallowing would have to be part of the equation as states heed a call by the federal government to cut their use by 15% to 30%. Paul Brierley, executive director of the Yuma Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture at the University of Arizona, said disrupting farm operations has downstream effects. “Farming is just like any other business,” Brierley said. “They’ve got capital invested, they’ve got employees, they’ve got markets for their products. You can’t just farm part of the time and not the rest.”
Governance
Australia's Key Climate Policy
This month, the Australian government passed important climate legislation targeting its biggest polluters. The safeguard mechanism requires industrial emitters that generate more than 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas annually to cut emissions by at least 4.9 per cent annually, or 30 per cent, by the end of the decade. It will impose binding caps on Australia’s 215 biggest polluters – including coal mines, gas plants, smelters, and manufacturers – to force them to reduce their carbon footprint by a cumulative 205 million tonnes by the end of the decade. Before the amendment, the scheme only forced net emissions to fall – meaning the big polluters could have increased the volume of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere and still complied with the rules by buying more carbon offset credits. The amendment should deliver about one-third of the reductions needed to achieve Labor’s climate target to reduce Australia's greenhouse budget by 43 per cent by 2030 . Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has said the safeguard mechanism will not prevent the development of new coal or gas projects even with this new deal, as the rate of emissions reduction exceeds the cuts needed to achieve the goal, leaving a buffer of about 17 million tonnes, which could leave room for the pollution generated by a new project. However, reform of the Safeguard Mechanism sends a positive signal to investors worldwide that Australia is joining the global investment boom in cleaning up economies, addressing energy security and modernising industry. "The reforms will help to unlock investment in the new and existing industries that will maximise Australia's competitive advantages in a net zero world," says the CEO of Investor Group on Climate Change, Rebecca Mikula-Wright.
Proxy Season Coming Up
Climate change issues will continue to dominate the hundreds of shareholder resolutions proposed at US companies in 2023, according to the Proxy Preview report released on March 22 by advocacy groups As You Sow, Sustainable Investments Institute and Proxy Impact. Shareholders had filed at least 542 resolutions on environmental, social and governance issues by February 17, on track to match or exceed 2022's record of 627 resolutions. Over 450 resolutions were scheduled for a vote, but that number will drop as activist shareholders and companies reach agreements. Heidi Welsh, executive director of the Sustainable Investments Institute and report co-author, expects the number of anti-ESG resolutions to increase to 70 this year, despite a tepid reception in 2022. "There is no indication that attacks on ESG investing are going to dampen investor appetite for facts and disclosure, which make the capital markets work better," Welsh said in a statement that accompanied the report. According to the report's tabulation of SEC filings, oil and gas companies and electric utilities face 59 different shareholder resolutions so far in 2023, almost all related to the environment and carbon emissions. The report noted that Exxon Mobil Corp.?was shareholders' top oil and gas target in 2023, with 11 shareholder resolutions filed. Eight are related directly to climate change. Furthermore, investors are beginning to require moving beyond simply setting long-term net-zero commitments. Calling on companies from Ferrari NV to Tesco Plc detailing how companies plan to deliver on their pledges, 93 investors, including Pictet Group and Schroders Plc, wrote to 107 companies asking them to develop so-called transition programs. They want the companies to show how they intend to decarbonise. The plans must include short- and medium-term emissions-reductions goals and provide details about how they plan to use capital expenditures to support such efforts.
领英推荐
Sweden Bans Non-ESG Funds From Pensions Pot
Sweden is inviting international asset managers to help allocate 1 trillion kronor ($90 billion) of pension savings but says it won't accept applications from firms that don't incorporate ESG into their strategies. “Unlike in the current system, there will be a requirement that the manager systematically integrates sustainability aspects into its operations,” Erik Fransson, executive director of the office, said in an interview. The move underscores different jurisdictions' wildly divergent approaches as they figure out how big a role ESG should play in mainstream investing. Sweden is now enshrining its ESG requirements for pension managers into?law , under which investment firms must show an "exemplary approach to sustainability through responsible investment and responsible ownership." Fransson said that fund managers who live up to Sweden's ESG expectations within the new framework will face reviews "on an ongoing basis" to ensure they continue to meet the "requirements that will appear in the fund agreement." These include a rule stipulating that firms need to prove they are responsible owners and also if they're tracking indexes.
Events?
Economist Impact
April 20, 2023
London and online
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Pensions & Investments
April 11-12, 2023
Chicago
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The Climate Group
April 19, 2023
Washington, DC
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CFA Institute
April 20-21, 2023
New York
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Environmental Finance
April 24, 2023
Washington, DC
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Chartered Governance Institute
April 27, 2023
London
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Institutional Investor
April 24-26, 2023
Los Angeles
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Impact Investing World Forum
May 4-6
London
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June 7, 2023
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Co-Founder at HigherSummit
1 年Something interesting happened recently. Watched the documentary Seaspricy with a couple of teenagers and now they absolutely refuse to eat fish. Young people are the real hope.