By Eugene Ellmen, Corporate Knights Will banks keep cheerleading fossil fuels while renewable stocks make a comeback? Eugene Ellmen shares his finance forecast. Temperature records were broken month after month in 2023, pushing governments around the globe to promise to triple their renewable-energy capacity and transition away from fossil fuels …
A Change in Tax Law has Some Solar Providers Walking on Sunshine
By Emily Jones, Grist “It’s going to enable a real scale-up of these programs, in Georgia and beyond.” The neighborhood near Savannah, Georgia, where rooftop solar installers Nicole Lee and Seth Gunning met up one fall afternoon was “ideal” for solar panels, they agreed. The houses were relatively new, and …
Canada isn’t Challenging Banks Enough to Prepare for Climate Chaos
By Matt Price, Corporate Knights OPINION: The safety and soundness of Canada’s financial system needs its regulator to take climate impacts more seriously. There’s an old joke about a chemist, a physicist and an economist trapped on an island with just one unopened can of food. The chemist suggests putting …
New Carbon Accounting Alliance Seeks Industry Standardization, Regulation to Support Net-Zero Transition
Sustainable Brands The launch includes a call to action for organizations worldwide to use the tools of carbon accounting to drive transition plans and direct emission reductions. Climate-action solutions providers Planet Mark and ClimatePartner have joined forces to launch the Carbon Accounting Alliance (CAA) — to enable greater oversight and professionalization of carbon accounting, to accelerate …
California to Require Big Firms to Reveal Carbon Emissions in First Law of its Kind
By Dharna Noor, The Guardian Measure signed into law by Gavin Newsom on Saturday is strong blueprint for national climate accountability, experts say. A groundbreaking California law will force large companies doing business in the state – including major global corporations – to disclose their planet-heating carbon emissions. The measure, signed into …
New Report Urges Insurance Companies to Stop Underwriting Climate Change
By Sustainable Brands ‘Underwriting Our Planet’ finds that rather than addressing climate change and biodiversity loss, many economic activities underwritten by insurance companies actually fuel the twin crises. WWF Switzerland and Deloitte Switzerland have co-launched a report that offers a first comprehensive insight into the impact of insurance companies’ underwriting business on climate change and biodiversity …
Beyond ‘Carbon Neutral:’ Refining Corporate Carbon-Credit Claims
By George Favaloro, Sustainable Brands With the explosive growth of the voluntary carbon market came concerns around carbon-reduction claims lacking clarity or being misleading. Several refined claims frameworks have emerged to bridge these gaps. Historically, companies relied on carbon credits to bolster claims of Carbon and Climate Neutrality; using these …
Study Shows Stronger ROI for Companies with High ESG Ratings
By Sustainable Brands Kroll analyzed data on over 13K companies across industries and found that those with better ESG ratings outperformed their peers with lower ratings; globally, ESG leaders had annual returns of 12.9% vs 8.6% for laggards. A new study by Kroll, a leading independent provider of global risk and …
At Long Last, There’s a Metric for Quantifying the Monetary Value of Sustainability Investments
By Tom Idle, Sustainable Brands Astanor Ventures’ Impact Multiple on Investment methodology translates the expected and realized benefits of invested-in products or services into monetary terms — helping investors make more informed, strategic decisions. Anybody working in sustainability is only too aware how crucial impact measurement is to maintaining performance. …
Landmark Report Sets Out 7 Steps for Embedding Nature, Equity Goals into Global Financial Activity
By Aldo Nestares, Sustainable Brands The Taskforce on Nature Markets asserts an unprecedented shift towards accurately pricing nature in global markets must occur to deliver on nature, climate and equity goals. On Thursday, at the Amazon Summit in Belém, Brazil, the Taskforce on Nature Markets launched its Making Nature Markets Work recommendations report — detailing how an unprecedented …