Investor coalitions

We recently celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). There can be few worthier causes than the principles that seek to protect us as humans – but should it be an issue for investors? Yes, it should – though we still need to translate it into a business case, and that can be hard amid the emotional strings that it pulls.

Summary

• Human rights can be financially material issue for investors and business
• Good human capital management feeds through into higher returns
• EU is helping to lay down frameworks but more clarity is needed

Includes:

ESG Addendum 2024 to the BT Group plc Annual Report 2024 - accessible version

"In this accessible PDF you can do many things to help you easily access the information that you want, whether that’s printing, searching for a specific item or going directly to another page, section or website."

Date
December 3, 2024
 
Time
8:30 a.m. GMT London
 
Location
A&O Shearman,
One Bishops Square,
10th Floor,
London,
E1 6AD,
United Kingdom.
 
Overview
Join MSCI on Tuesday, December 3, for the launch of the MSCI Sustainability and Climate Trends to Watch for 2025. Get an exclusive preview of our annual trends report and hear insights from our Research team on the key sustainability and climate trends for the coming year. The event will also offer a morning of networking and inspiring conversations.

Vancouver - March 5-6, 2025

The SHARE Investor Summit brings together asset owners and managers from coast to coast to coast to discuss solutions to our most pressing economic issues and explore opportunities for co-ordinated investor action toward reconciliation, climate action, human rights, affordable housing and racial equity.

While U.S. political dynamics are evolving when it comes to ESG, there’s an undeniable current in the global business landscape: companies are finding practical ways forward, focusing less on the politics and more on effective business management.

The Global Business Reality

Regardless of domestic political changes, thousands of U.S. companies still need to meet international sustainability requirements. European regulations like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) are reshaping how global businesses operate, affecting more than 3,000 U.S. companies. For businesses operating internationally, these requirements aren't optional – they're just part of doing business in today's interconnected world.

Editor's note - Please access the flip book via the link below

As sustainability reporting continues to evolve, the concept of double materiality has emerged as a key framework to align financial reporting with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. This approach, deeply embedded within the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group’s (EFRAG) ESRS (European Sustainability Reporting Standards), is becoming increasingly relevant for organizations aiming to meet stakeholder expectations, drive transparency, and adhere to regulatory requirements.

We’ve heard a lot about the ‘Trump Trade’ in the aftermath of the US election. This describes the huge stock market gains experienced by various sectors in the hours and days following the result. Is this really what we should expect for the next four years? While it may seem as though the world has just become a more hostile place, we believe the future is still bright for sustainability investors. In this article, Claire Jervis explores our outlook. 

"As our latest edition of the Net Zero Atlas shows...the outlook remains challenging. G20 countries. will have to set ambitious new 2035 targets to accelerate the pace of the transition and limit warming to well below 2°C by the end of the century. This is also the clear policy signal many companies and investors are looking for as they take steps to mobilise long-term investment in greening the global economy. 

The Atlas also highlights the cost of inaction, as physical effects of climate change intensify across the globe. The devastating hurricanes Milton and Helene in the US this autumn were one among many stark reminders of this. Looking ahead, our research shows that cities – nerve centres of the global economy and home to over half of the global population – will be particularly affected, requiring large scale adaptation measures and financing.

The analysis and data in this report provide investors with a valuable and timely analysis of physical and transition climate risks across the G20."

Why investors need to pay attention to Natural Capital and Biodiversity 

Natural Capital – soil, forests, water, living organisms - underpins the functioning of our society. The ecosystem services that it provides facilitates our global economy – whether that is through the provision of raw materials or the regulation and maintenance of a stable and healthy functioning environment. The economic value of these ecosystem services has been estimated by the WWF as up to USD125tn per year [see SRI-C buzz October 2024] well over annual global GDP. However, modern economic systems have repeatedly underpriced natural capital, as it is not officially recognised as an economic asset. The actual payments within the economy for ecosystem services is therefore 40 times lower than their estimated value... This has allowed for continued underinvestment in our natural assets, ultimately leading to their systematic degradation
of quality and depletion.

Cheat sheet also available - here

Analysis of oil and gas corporate emissions targets reveals whether targets may be potentially aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement, providing a signal of compatibility between corporate plans and a rapid energy transition in the process.

Investigating the emissions targets of 30 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, this note provides decision-useful analysis to portfolio managers, analysts, policymakers, standard-setters, and regulators. Beyond untangling the climate impact of companies for stakeholders with a mandate or other reason to act on emissions, the analysis paints a stark picture of corporates’ ongoing exposure to energy transition risk – and the risk this presents to all investors and banks with oil and gas portfolio companies, in turn...

COP29 is set to be a big moment for climate finance, with decisions due on determining future commitments via the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). While negotiations will primarily focus on agreeing on public finance volumes and processes necessary for climate mitigation and adaptation —especially in support of developing nations — it is crucial to also highlight the progress made and the gaps that remain in aligning private finance with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Annual investment to support the transition needs to double in the next 5 years (from $2 trillion today to $4 trillion by 2030, according to the IEA), and up to 70 percent of this will need to come from private finance. To ensure that private finance remains an accountable and important player in the transition, RMI has summarized the state of progress among the largest private finance institutions globally and identified areas to accelerate action.

When RMI last checked in on the state of the market in 2023, we saw that climate-related market norms were already being established: The largest financial institutions were announcing net zero commitments and setting interim targets, despite questions of disclosure credibility and commitment accountability. Today, questions on transition planning standardization, transparency, and execution have risen to the fore.

The Clean Edge 100 ranks the top publicly traded clean-tech companies in the clean energy, transportation, water, and grid sectors. Eligible companies are members of our global equity research universe and the rankings only include companies that are determined to receive 50% or more of their revenue from clean-tech activities (pure plays). Companies are ranked according to an equally weighted composite of market capitalization, revenue, and operating profit. Revenue and operating profit are adjusted by business exposure as evaluated by Clean Edge.

The list of 100 top-ranked companies includes energy storage & conversion behemoths BYD, CATL, and Tesla; grid infrastructure leaders Schneider Electric, Eaton, and National Grid; and water innovators Ecolab, Xylem, and American Water Works. U.S.-domiciled and China-domiciled companies lead the pack with 26 listings each, followed by Brazil with seven and France and South Korea tied with five each. In terms of the top sectors in this year’s rankings, renewable energy leads with 28 companies, followed by grid, water, and energy storage & conversion with 27, 19, and 17 selections respectively.

RFI Foundation: Can AI help us to understand the way that economic expectations drive the financial sector’s response to external shocks?

The way we understand economics and its influence on financial markets is largely driven by expectations for the future. Financial markets and the commentary written about them naturally look to the future to understand what might happen next even though we only have information about what has already happened. The concept of ‘expectations’ is shorthand for the way we create a story with the data we do know, influenced by ‘sentiment’ about economic outcomes today and in the future.

Concepts like expectations and sentiment are difficult to measure in real-time and often rely on infrequent surveys. This infrequency and reliance on often small samples make it difficult to track how expectations are changing, except indirectly through the impact these changes have on financial data.

We have interviewed researchers at the University of Buckingham, University College London, and Princeton University who are training an AI model with the input from finance sector experts that they expect will help to evaluate sentiment from a richer and higher-frequency universe of articles to see if AI can help to more clearly deduce expectations than the methods used today.

This is an important project to understand how financial sector players create and update their perceptions of risk, which influences how external shocks to the economy and financial system are transmitted through the industry. The increase in impacts of climate change on the physical world and economy will represent a continuous series of ‘shocks’ to the physical environment and economy. A better understanding of the way that exogenous shocks are transmitted through the financial sector will be important to safeguarding against future crises.

The project discussed in the interview below also provides an opportunity for people with experience in the financial sector whose experience includes assessing types of financial risks. We have provided a form if you would like more information about participating in the project. Participation in the project should take about an hour to complete.  Participants will receive information about the project and its results, and will have an opportunity to use the AI model that is being trained after the project concludes.

Interview with Dr. Ali Kabiri and Brandon Davies

Blake Goud (RFI): Could you give an introduction to your background and the project that you're working on with AI and finance?

Brandon Davies: My name is Brandon Davies. I'm here because I'm involved with this AI project through my work teaching master's courses at the University of Buckingham. My background, however, is not as an academic. I am an economist and my background is in the financial industry, including working on structured products at Barclays Capital and then as Treasurer of the retail operations of Barclays Group. I was on the management board of the bank before retiring. In retirement, I've worked for central banks setting up training programs for central bankers and bankers around the world, particularly for Indonesia and China.

Dr. Ali Kabiri: I am Professor Ali Kabiri at the University of Buckingham and I also work at University College London (UCL) in the Centre for the Study of Decision-Making Uncertainty, a research group led by Professor David Tuckett. As Brandon mentioned, at Buckingham we do a lot of work together on banking risk and this applied project focuses on understanding risk. In my research, I'm very interested in the interconnections between the financial system and the economy in general and one of those channels relates to risk, which often considers perceptions of what will happen in the future.

Blake Goud: Can you give an overview of what the project is? How are you using AI and what conclusions are you trying to reach in the project?

Dr. Ali Kabiri: The project is to create an artificial mind from the inputs of human labellers evaluating text data, which are then used to train or ‘fine tune’ a language model. What we're aiming to do in this project is to get financial professionals, especially people who have high-level domain expertise evaluating financial risk, to train these artificial minds. These language models can then be applied to various sources of text data to see if we can essentially divine the future path of the markets and economy from their perceptions.

Brandon Davies: When I first entered the dealing room, all the data we had was analogue. It was shown up on TV screens but you couldn't capture the data unless you could remember it because it just flashed across the screen. A lot of the work I did was digitizing the dealing room at what became Barclays Capital and then developing models based on that historical data. However, one of the things I've always taught students is that the only data you want in your models is future data. But you can't have it because it doesn't exist.

Words and phrases give us a whole other dimension to apply on the data that we do have because when we write about finance, we usually write about the future, not the past. A lot of what appears in published articles is reporting the data we do have and looking to the future implications. Having the ability to look at the information reflected in the phrases used in these articles and to determine what they tell us about people's expectations will be very valuable, because expectations are extremely important in how we think about economics from a practical perspective.

The economist John Maynard Keynes talked about the way that expectations are set, and how expectations can shape people’s attitudes, which then go on to affect what people do and the outcomes that result. From an academic perspective, I've always found this concept interesting and I've always thought it had practical implications as well, and AI is a tool that might help.

There are two big practical issues that people face in the industry in this case. One is that AI models cost an awful lot of money to run because they rely on so much data. If there is a way to reduce the data needed to train the model, that may have a significant effect on the amount of expense you've got in running the models and their utility.

We have done some very preliminary work on this and the results so far have been quite dramatic in lowering the runtime to train a model with experts down to one percent of what is required if you purely use a large language model just left to its own devices. We have primarily tackled this issue, but the next phase of this work could help produce logic models to better understand the logic by which models get to the results they give.

If we can do that then we may well be able to significantly improve the usefulness and applicability of these tools. I've put enough of these types of models in front of regulators and they won't usually let you use a model if you can't explain how it reached its conclusions, which is a weakness in a lot of AI at the moment that we may well be able to significantly improve on.

Blake Goud: And when you're talking about explaining and expectations is this something that can improve the understanding of the transmission of exogenous shocks throughout the financial sector?

Dr. Ali Kabiri: I think ultimately that it is an aim to see those dimensions. So how do professionals with domain knowledge react and respond to those kinds of stimuli? For example, when there is a monetary policy shock, how does perception of risk change and similarly how might endogenous changes in risk perceptions lead to changes in the financial markets. In this case, the particular area that we're looking at, as Brandon said, is textual information and how that's interpreted, and that has application across all types of shocks.

And I think we're really just at the beginning of understanding how people respond; really understanding their psychology. We have the benefit of working with experts in language and psychology and understanding the human side of the responses, but also to use computer science and language models to create artificial minds that behave like financial professionals.

It's not an area that has really been understood well and so that's what makes it exciting. We now have the technical ability to look much deeper into human behaviour in an economic context and that applies across all sorts of domains, including various different types of exogenous shocks.

Brandon Davies: One of the things we're doing with the model is very much looking at the words that people use and of course, they're very contextual. Because of that, in finance if you can limit the model to looking only at finance publications then you may be able to significantly cut down on the amount of data you're using because the words will always be in a particular context. An example I give to students is ‘long’ and ‘short’ have a particular meaning in finance that they certainly don't have in general usage. You don't want the model to go off chasing the general usage. You want to restrict yourself to the specific definition that is relevant to finance.

Blake Goud: You mentioned several of the challenges about taking these models and applying them in the context of the finance sector. How does the project indicate a way forward in terms of addressing things like data privacy, cybersecurity, and bias in models?

Brandon Davies: If you look at models it does depend a lot on what you're modelling as to whether you will want bias in the model or not. Bias in AI models basically has two main types:  data bias and societal bias. Data bias refers to bias embedded in the data used to train the AI models.

A good example of data bias was the case of  facial recognition software having larger error rates for minority ethnic people, particularly minority women. The reason for this was the input data was skewed towards non-ethnic minorities. As the model tries to optimize prediction accuracy the over-representation in the training set leads to these errors.

These are the types of errors you don’t want. The societal level biases are where legacy ideas or norms from a society cause blind spots. This was seen in the case of a recruitment algorithm developed by Amazon, where female applicants were negatively scored  because the algorithm was trained on resumes submitted to the company over a 10-year period and reflected the male dominance of the industry.

There could be some advantage for our study, in the financial sense, to discover biases when reacting to financial news, as these may help explain the economy and financial markets. In some ways when we ask people for an immediate reaction to something it's bound to contain some of their biases, which provide explainability for what we see in reality. A lot of these biases are captured by the sayings used in dealing rooms, like he ‘who panics first panics best’ or ‘you know, don't fight the Fed’.

You know these are biases or sources of bias but nonetheless we would want them because if decision makers are using them, it provides a frame of reference in their mind, which is exactly what we want to capture.

Blake Goud: So is the focus on the explainability that you mentioned particularly challenging with regulators? Are you developing this project as a way to explain why particular results are coming out of the AI, and identify what biases are influencing the outputs rather than just trying to train the model to edit them out over time?

Dr. Ali Kabiri: That's a really important point and this is something that is a fairly recent development in the project because of the existence of a particular type of text-to-text ‘chain of thought’ model. The technology exists now if you can get the right domain experts and have them explain the chain of reasoning for an outcome from the AI model.

Being able to train it in that way, which is more extensive, you could then ask the AI to tell you why it's making that decision. What are the thought processes going through people's minds before they or the artificial mind give you that output would be a very exciting part of it.

Brandon Davies: The focus on explainability won't be for the initial model; it is something we are considering for the future development of the model. To start, we are asking people to help train the model with two types of reactions about the impact of a series of specific shocks. One reaction that participants would provide is an evaluation about the shock itself, such as the impact of a shock on a particular company or market. The second reaction would catalogue the expected macroeconomic implications of the shock.

A participant would help us train the model by scoring in two ways on a -5 to +5 scale. First, would you, in a sense, buy or sell based on the shock and then would you consider it to have a ‘risk on’ or ‘risk off’ impact. To give you an example of why we do it that way, say a big oil company were the subject of a question and oil prices are going up, this might be very good for the oil company but perhaps very bad for the economy. There's a need to look at those two, both the micro risk and the macro risk.

Blake Goud: For people reading this who are in the finance sector with experience in assessing financial risk who are interested in AI, are there opportunities for them to help with the project? How would they benefit from participating and understanding and learning more about AI models and how they work?

Dr. Ali Kabiri: One of the main aims or one of the main benefits for participants is engaging on a professional level with these types of language models and AI models, to appreciate how they are used and will be used in the future. There is an exponential expansion of the use of AI now and its capabilities are, without exaggerating, growing exponentially.

There has been a continuous upside surprise. In that sense, it's clearly something that will be important in the future, and being able to see how these models are developed, I think, is a great learning experience for those who participate. The model that we generate will also be available to them. This is going to be done on an open platform to people who are involved and they may develop it further or have ideas for development.

Brandon Davies: If I go back to my days working on the analogue-to-digital transition, one of the things that scared everybody at the time was a lot of people thought that dealing rooms would be much smaller and run by a relatively few quants after the transition to digital. When I started in the dealing room, it had about 100 people and when I left, it had grown to about 300.

We were dealing in markets that did not exist when we operated only with analogue screens. The products did not exist. The markets exploded on the back of the transition to digital screens and it wouldn't surprise me to see something similar happen again with the introduction of AI.

The number of people in the dealing room had grown, but the roles they filled had changed quite a lot in terms of the skill base they brought to the job. People who came to terms with the introduction of digital data and understood digital markets grew enormously in their careers and those who didn't, didn't.

I'm quite bullish about the future for people who pursue the new opportunities that AI will bring. I don't think it's the end of dealers or investment managers or anything else. I think it's just a whole new way of working.

Blake Goud: Yeah, we've seen similar things in terms of the introduction of the ATM machine not putting bank staff out of work. It just changed what they're doing day-to-day. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up our discussion?

Dr. Ali Kabiri: I think there's a really good point that Brandon is making that these kinds of technologies are likely to expand markets rather than replace jobs. There are vast and untapped markets across the world where the barriers are often frictions that have historically limited expansion. And we are at the stage with this technology where many of those frictions are going to disappear very quickly and these technologies will empower and expand finance.

Brandon Davies: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. For people interested in participating in this, you’ll get to learn a lot about one of the technologies that’s at the forefront of these trends, and it's only going to take about an hour of somebody's time. If they participate, we will be explaining the project in more detail as well as the results and what they're producing. And as Ali says, probably give people access to the model itself so they can use it to try it for themselves.

Get the latest insights about responsible finance in OIC markets & Islamic finance from the RFI Foundation, C.I.C. Subscribe to RFI’s free email newsletter today!

The path toward net zero emissions presents both the biggest challenge and investment opportunity of our times. The transition to a low-carbon economy to combat climate change is a landscape rich with potential in transition solutions that range from renewable energy to the global decarbonization of industry. Yet many investors remain unsure about how to tap into these opportunities.

S&P Global: Dutch appeals court overturns ruling requiring Shell to reduce emissions

The Dutch Court of Appeal has overturned a lower court ruling that required Shell to cut its global carbon footprint by 45% by 2030, ruling that Shell has a more general obligation to reduce its emissions by an unspecified amount.

Shell welcomed the overturning of the earlier judgement by a district court in 2021 in a case brought by the Dutch chapter of Friends of the Earth. Shell had in response to the ruling committed to tougher emissions reductions, underlining its commitment to becoming a "net-zero" emissions company by 2050. It has also committed to cut its operational emissions by half by 2030, but it appealed against the district court ruling, arguing that it unfairly discriminated against the company.

Borussia Dortmund: Sustainability Report 2023/4

In Series 5, Episode 5 of Good Things Happen, Alex Miller is joined by:

• Irina Gorbounova, Vice President M&A and Head of XCarb Innovation Fund, ArcelorMittal, and
• Liz Curmi, Global Thematic Analyst, Citi Global Insights

... to discuss hard to abate industries, and share their insights on decarbonization and how the world progresses to net zero in this space.

The key to meeting sustainability goals is the circular economy. The circular economy is a sustainable approach to production and consumption that maximizes the value of materials through reusing and recycling. Unlike the traditional linear economy, which relies on a “take, make, and dispose” model, the circular economy emphasizes reducing waste, reusing products, and recycling materials to create a closed-loop system. This method minimizes environmental impact and extends the life cycle of resources, decreasing costs, reducing supply chain risks, and generating multiple forms of profit.  

This report highlights the circular economy’s significant environmental and business impact, including the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by 7.2 megatons and create 700,000 jobs. We also share how Evalueserve supports businesses and their journey to reach circularity. Our team of dedicated experts helps clients optimize their resource usage and reduce their carbon footprint through tailored solutions and frameworks. Read our free report to dive deeper into our circular economy insights and how we can help your business achieve circularity. 

The US elections last week are set to transform the energy landscape, with the Republicans now in control of the presidency, the Senate, and likely the House of Representatives.

They intend to set a new direction for energy policy, emphasising affordability and reliability over sustainability and climate.

In this special episode of The Energy Gang, we explore what this shift means for the American energy sector and the potential implications for both domestic and global markets.

Deputy head of Greenbank Nicola Day singles out some likely topics to feature at this year’s COP which has been designated the ‘finance COP.’

Sustainable Fitch’s ESG Regulations and Reporting Standards Tracker monitors the fast-paced regulatory environment, updated quarterly. This report accompanies the quarterly update of the Excel tool, which can be downloaded via the link in Related Research.

This report explores the regulatory landscape for nature-related reporting and transition planning in 3Q24, as we witnessed rising interests in standard setting and demand for related reporting requirements in the two areas. Regulatory development in sustainable finance slowed in 3Q24 as most regions entered their summer break. That said, some jurisdictions have published or updated relevant standards and regulations.

For example, Costa Rica published the first version of its Sustainable Finance Taxonomy in August, while the US state of Minnesota has adopted mandatory climate disclosure rules, following the similar development from other states on climate reporting. In recent years, corporates have been increasingly embracing nature-related reporting, recognising the importance of environmental sustainability to stakeholders. This is further driven by growing demand for transparency and accountability as well as regulatory pressures around quantifying ecological impacts. With the introduction of various guidelines and frameworks, more companies are intending to integrate nature-related metrics within their sustainability reporting across their value chain.

Robeco’s Fashion Engagement team reflects on its first year, future growth opportunities and engagement developments across the fashion value chain.

Summary

• Consumers demand more fact-based and less blab-based cosmetics
• Brands leverage sports and athletes to inspire innovation
• Engagement efforts focus on building bridges with brands and suppliers

The 16th International Conference of the Parties on biodiversity (COP16) took place during the past two weeks in Cali, Colombia. Representatives of 196 governments gathered to negotiate implementation and financing for global biodiversity targets. Business and finance were notably present, alongside civil society organizations and academics. Robeco’s climate and biodiversity strategist Lucian Peppelenbos attended the conference and shares his key insights.

Summary

• Nature finance was put at the core of the negotiations
• Building momentum in business approaches to biodiversity
• Good progress made in overcoming the data challenge

A practitioner’s perspective

"‘More activity’ appears to have become the dominant narrative in investor stewardship and engagement in recent years. In WHEB’s view, this misses the point. Instead, the focus should be on ‘more
effective’ stewardship and engagement that fulfils its purpose of delivering long-term value for clients."

2DII conducted an extensive literature review of approximately 300 papers to provide an updated overview of what we know about collective investor impact in secondary markets through coordinated price signalling and collaborative engagement.

We provide a detailed technical report with an in-depth analysis of two collective impact mechanisms usable on public (secondary) markets that would not be as effective if done by single investors (even the largest ones): price signalling and engagement. It discusses the narrative underlying the use of those mechanisms and conditions under which they can turn effective to make a positive difference.

Moreover, we developed two summary briefings with the key findings including lists of “impact success factors” we could derive from the literature review and practical recommendations for investors to maximize their impact potential through collective action as well as for managers of coordination devices (ESG labels, ESG indices, proxy advisors, etc.) to improve their offering.

Key findings include:

• The majority of companies disclose an ambition: Over two-thirds of companies (68) disclose a commitment to protect nature and two-thirds (46) of those have commitments that extend through company value chains.
• Few companies disclose robust nature-related assessments: Only one company discloses evidence of a comprehensive materiality assessment of nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, or opportunities.
• A significant number of companies disclose nature targets and plans to implement them: 47 companies disclose targets to avoid or reduce their impact on nature and over three-quarters (37) of these companies also disclose strategies for achieving those goals.
• Companies disclose limited progress towards recognizing and protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities: Only 31 companies meet at least one of the five benchmark metrics related to respecting and upholding the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, who play crucial roles in biodiversity conservation, restoration, and stewardship. No company meets all the criteria.

Links to results

• Key findings analysis here
• Full benchmark results here
• Individual company assessments here

The GIIN estimates that over 3,907 organizations currently manage $1.571 trillion USD in impact investing assets under management (AUM) worldwide, representing 21% compound annual growth (CAGR) of the total impact investing market since 2019.

This year’s report, Sizing the Impact Investing Market 2024, marks the first time the GIIN has been able to calculate a CAGR for the size of the impact investing market.

How to make a small fortune? Start with a large one & invest in LNG?

As the energy transition accelerates, the oil and gas industry must contend with a shrinking market for its products. In response, certain companies are shifting the focus of their portfolios gas, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) in particular. The industry’s recent push into LNG has seen a surge in buildouts of new LNG infrastructure, and the global production capacity is expected to increase by c.50% by 2030.

In the face of this massive industry push into LNG, it is imperative for investors and policymakers to assess both the assumptions underlying the putative investment case and the risks involved should they be miscalculated.

The report, Turning Tides: The economic risks of B.C.’s LNG expansion in a changing energy market, examines the dynamics of the LNG market, highlighting uncertain (and, in some markets, falling) future demand and the likely oversupply of LNG by the end of this decade.

Competition is good for business. It forces companies to become more efficient and more productive and it reduces profit margins, often leading to lower prices for consumers. But sometimes it requires outsiders to break into an industry and ‘disrupt’ it to rejuvenate a staid industry. And it seems one industry where this is happening right now is one of the most boring ones: electric utilities.

Utility companies are famously boring. They often have low or no growth opportunities, and operate in stable markets, some of which are heavily regulated and there is little incentive to innovate or increase efficiency. In the past, this often led to underinvestment in infrastructure and high prices for consumers as utility companies were more concerned with paying high dividends to their owners than serving their customers well.

For decades now, the response of politicians has been to deregulate electricity and water markets so that prices fluctuate, and different providers compete with each other to produce at the lowest cost possible. Yet, all too often the result was simply an even bigger underinvestment in ageing infrastructure and even poorer customer service as margins for utility companies declined but owners still insisted on their fat dividends (if you live in the UK, just think of the disaster that are our water utilities).

Enter an unlikely disruptor...

Creative Investment Research: October 2024 Unemployment: No Meaningful Change

The October 2024 unemployment data by race and ethnicity shows a stable picture when analyzed for seasonal adjustments and overall trends

Creative Investment Research: KAMALANOMICS

Kamalanomics: Home and Health - see link below

"In our third quarterly report, we reflect on the sustainability trends that shaped the 2024 proxy voting season and provide a case study on our engagement with Unilever. Our latest research uncovers the risks and opportunities presented by increasing global temperatures which have the ability to impact the present. We also share our latest insights on the spectrum of opportunities surrounding natural capital and biodiversity within private markets, as well as how salient human rights and financially material risks intersect in an increasingly turbulent world."

The Sustainability Trends Report is Generation’s flagship annual publication which seeks to answer the question of where the world stands in the transition to a low-emissions economy.

This year’s report is the eighth annual edition and takes stock of the climate and environmental crises at a global scale.

Last year’s report was buoyed by the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States and by European success at countering the energy crisis manufactured by Vladimir Putin.

This year, we feel compelled to write in detail about the difficulties still confronting the world as it tries to bring emissions down.

JobPost: JPMorganChase - Asset & Wealth Management, Climate Specialist, ESG Team, Associate (London | Close Unknown)

JobPost: RLAM - ESG and Sustainability Research Analyst (London  | Closing date: 4th December 2024)

Job Title: ESG and Sustainability Research Analyst

Contract Type: Permanent 

Location: London

Working style: Hybrid 50% home/office based

Closing date: 4th December 2024

NB posted 30+ days ago but still advertised

Specialist Sovereign Engagement (Australia & COP 31) - 2 Year Fixed Term Contract - Principles for Responsible Investment - Applied

Intern - Stewardship (3 Month Fixed Term Contract) - Principles for Responsible Investment - Applied

"Our Investor Relations team manages the relationship and communications between Tesco and its shareholders and the wider investment community. It is a high-profile team that supports the CEO, CFO and Group Investor Relations Director to communicate the performance of the Tesco Group.

You will be primarily responsible for communicating our ESG objectives and progress, fielding questions from analysts and investors on a broad range of topics, as well as supporting senior management in their interactions with investors. The role will require you to build positive relationships with key colleagues, familiarise yourself with Tesco’s extensive ESG disclosure, and establish relationships with investors and analysts."

Please note this role is a fixed term contract for 12 months

Full details via the link below

JobPost: BlackRock: VP, Sustainability Platform Strategy & Implementation (London | Close Unknown)

Infrastructure engineer

Head of financial control

Head of sponsorship, events

JobPost: Jupiter Asset Management Ltd -  ESG Analyst (12 month FTC)(London | CloseDate: Unknown)

JobPost: U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) - Managing Director, Environmental & Social Risk Assessment (Health & Agribusiness) (Washington | CloseDate: 5th November)

JobPost: S&P Global - Reporter, Energy Transition Metals (Washington | CloseDate: Unknown)