Investor alliance to launch climate change action plan at United Nations

F&C has joined a coalition of more than forty leading US and European institutional investors, responsible for over $1.75 trillion in assets, in announcing a climate change action plan at the Investor Summit on Climate Risk, hosted by Ceres and the United Nations Foundation in New York.

The plan will seek to boost investments in energy efficiency and clean energy technologies and require tougher scrutiny about carbon-intensive investments that may pose long-term financial risks.

The investors will state that climate change presents both material risks and significant opportunities and set out nine goals including policy actions aimed at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Congress, engagement with companies to improve their disclosure and responses to climate change, as well as the minimisation of climate investment risks.

Investor commitments will include:

Support clean technology, with a goal of deploying $10 billion collectively over the next two years.

Aim for a 20 per cent reduction in energy used in core real estate investment holdings over a three-year period and consider green building standards in making investment decisions.

Require and validate that investment managers' report on how they are assessing climate risks in their portfolios, whether from new carbon-reducing regulations, physical impacts or competitive risks.

Encourage analysts and rating agencies to analyse and report on the potential impacts of long-term carbon costs, particularly on carbon-intensive investments such as new coal-fired power plants, oil shale, tar sands and coal-to-liquid projects.

Push the US Securities and Exchange Commission to issue guidance leading to full corporate disclosure of climate risks and opportunities.

Push the US Congress for a mandatory national policy to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the 60-90 percent reductions below 1990 levels by 2050 that scientists suggest is urgently needed to avoid the worst and most costly impacts from climate change

"This action plan reflects the many investment opportunities that exist today to dent global warming pollution, build profits and benefit the global economy," said Mindy S. Lubber, President of the Ceres investor coalition and Director of the 60-member Investor Network on Climate Risk. "Leveraging the vast energy efficiency opportunities at home and abroad holds especially great promise for investors."

Alain Grisay, Chief Executive of F&C, added: "Climate change has the potential both to cause devastating damage to the economy if we do nothing about it, and to generate very profitable investment opportunities if we confront it by taking sensible early action. F&C strongly supports calls for the US government to introduce a mandatory national policy to cut CO2 emissions: investors and industry need certainty over what the regulatory regime will be over the next two to three decades in order to release the billions of investment capital that will finance the shift we need to make to a low-carbon energy system."