Scaling up sustainable investments

The European Commission published an EU Taxonomy Navigator, aimed to help users better understand the EU Taxonomy.

The EU Taxonomy Navigator offers three tools to help you navigate the EU Taxonomy - (1) a compass of the?Taxonomy contents, (2) a calculator for turnover, CapEx and OpEx KPIs, and (3) a "Frequently Asked Question" repository.

05 April - 03 May 2023: a four week consultation period is open on the EU taxonomy criteria for economic activities concerning water protection, circular economy, pollution prevention and protection of biodiversity and ecosystems.

The Commission is also proposing targeted amendments to the Taxonomy Climate Delegated Act and to the Taxonomy Disclosures Delegated Act.

Linda Romanovska , a Member of the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance, published a useful explainer article about the taxonomy in Invest4Nature .

In the news

Wall Street Journal: Foreign companies to be hit by EU Sustainability rules.

CEEnergyNews: Central European agriculture - more attention to climate investing needed.

ESGToday: Apple decarbonises its value chain, it aims to move to 100% renewable energy for all Apple production.

Financial Times: Fossil fuel divestment pledges by investors on social media impacted carbon-intensive companies.

Responsible Investor: Japan’s three ‘mega banks’ hit with climate proposals

Euractiv: Germany and France, divided on nuclear power, are confusing clean tech investors.?

ESGToday: ISSB gives companies an additional year on general sustainability reporting to allow focus on climate disclosure.

S in ESG for CFOs: WBCSD – World Business Council for Sustainable Development has published a practical guide for CFOs on S in ESG.

Recommended readings

SME financing gap paper: Thorsten Beck & Natalie Kessler from European University Institute have published a paper looking at SME financing between 2013 and 2020.

AI in Climate Science: This paper presents a conversational AI prototype, demonstrating its ability to answer challenging questions accurately in different QA scenarios : asking from GPT4, chatIPCC, and hybrid chatIPCC.?

Bank Carbon Footprint: Covering six CEE countries, this 安永 solution supports banks in measuring their financed emissions, evaluating carbon footprint, and addressing regulatory needs.

Rethinking Monetary policy: The March edition of the International Monetary Fund 's Finance & Development is out, this time with a monetary policy focus.

ETS status report: The International Carbon Action Partnership (ICAP) presents the latest developments in emissions trading systems worldwide, as carbon markets hold steady amid energy cost surges.

A rocky recovery: "The baseline forecast is for growth to fall from 3.4 percent in 2022 to 2.8 percent in 2023, before settling at 3.0 percent in 2024" - the new report on global economic outlook by International Monetary Fund is out.

Supply chain carbon-neutrality:?This comprehensive guide from Plan A explains emission scopes 1, 2 & 3 - as defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) :

Impact investing: How should sustainable funds communicate their expected impact in a transparent and systematic way? This white paper describes how such information can be used by external parties to quantify the impact sustainable investment funds have on real-world developments.

Cheap Talk in Climate Disclosures: The \climatebertcti, a deep learning approach, analyses climate-related cheap talk in 14,584 MSCI World index firms' annual reports from 2010-2020.

Death threats to climate scientists: This survey highlights experiences of dozens of climate researchers who have endured online harassment related to their work.

Budapest Solar Map: This map helps citizens to find out how much electricity they can generate with solar panels in a year.

Global Startup Index: Czechia emerged as the best country to launch a startup in 2023:

Podcasts and videos

Our CEO Linda Zeilina-Cross spoke to Andrew Wrobel on the Emerging Europe podcast episode, discussing the usefulness of the EU Taxonomy, the challenges and the solutions to implementing sustainability in practice.

Climate Risk: In this new episode from Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) , Chris Howland and Lars Popken of 德意志银行 discuss the complexities of incorporating climate risk within financial institutions.

Fossil fuel use of the US military: In the Sustainability Agenda podcast, Professor Neta Crawford discusses the huge carbon footprint of the Pentagon — the world’s largest single greenhouse gas emitter.

Re-energising the European transition: a special one-day event focused on sustainability in practice for both finance and business sectors took place in Warsaw, 28 March. The panel discussions on energy, real estate, sustainability reporting and banking are available on the event website.

Events

Online: Starting from 18 April, this?eleven-week course?on the fundamentals of the EU Green Deal, energy and climate policy will be hosted online by the?European University Institute.

Prague, Czechia:?ATOZ Group?will host its first?Czech and Slovak Sustainability Summit?on 20 April, with a packed programme and sustainability case studies.

London, UK: Science and Innovation for long-term sustainability, organised by the Association of Latvian Students and Researchers in the UK (ALSRUK), is happening on 22 April.

Florence, Italy: The 13th edition of?The State of the Union?hosted by the?European University Institute?conference will take place?in-person in Florence?on?4-6 May 2023.

Edinburgh, UK:?UKSIF?will host its annual?spring conference?on 10 and 11 May, followed by its alternative investment week in June.

Prague, Czechia: Between 15 and 19 May, we will host our flagship conference,?CEE Sustainable Finance Summit. This year’s speakers include Ivan Barto? , Minister of Regional Development of the Czech Republic,? Marosi Gabriel , Group Sustainability Officer at Erste Group ,? Eila Kreivi , Chief Sustainable Finance Advisor at the European Investment Bank (EIB) ,? Valerie Smith , Chief Sustainability Officer of 花旗 Bank, Eelco van der Enden , CEO of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Initiative, and many more!

You can find the preliminary agenda and the speakers on the Summit website: www.ceesummit.org