According to a recent report by the New Climate Economy, transitioning to net zero is set to deliver up to $26tn in investment and job creation opportunities by 2030. But unless investors are using a reliable platform to help them sift through rhetoric and company promises, they are left without a holistic picture to correctly assess opportunities.
For instance, take a cement company that naturally has high carbon emissions. To reduce emissions, this company then launches a project to offset carbon emissions and issues a sustainability-linked bond to finance this project. As a result, this company looks on track to meet both its targets and government legislation and investing in this company’s stock or in this bond suddenly looks pretty favourable to an investment firm.
Good investment, right? Not necessarily, says Patricia Torres, global head of sustainable finance solutions at Bloomberg LP.
“When Bloomberg calculates a carbon intensity score for this company to help investors compare it with peers, we don’t take into account this carbon offset,” she says. “We base our scores on how much companies actually emit, so cement companies that emit less compare better to others. Also, investment firms in the EU, or who market their funds in the EU, need to report to clients how much of their portfolio aligns with the EU’s taxonomy of sustainable activities, which provides clear definitions for which activities are sustainable.”