Pension And Planet

Event: Managing Climate Change Risks

SHANNON — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:29:48 +0000

The P2 Project, jointly with Mercer Investment Consultants, held successful events in Montreal and Winnipeg looking at the implications of climate change for investment decision-making. The events featured leading Canadian climate scientists who provided overviews of the latest climate science and the emerging risks and impacts of climate change for investors. Following, Mercer provided the workshop participants with some tools to use to minimize the investment risks from climate change.

Below are links to the presentations made at both events.

Climate Change: The Big Picture

Dr. Danny Blair, Principal, Richardson College of the Environment and Acting Dean of Science, University of Winnipeg

Impacts of Climate Change for Canada: Risks and Opportunities for Investors

Henry David Venema, PhD, Director, Natural and Social Capital, International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)

Global Climate Changes and Impacts from Ongoing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Dr. Damon Matthews, Associate Professor, Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University

Sector Focus: The Impacts of Climate Change on Agricultural Production

Dr. Navin Ramankutty, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, McGill University, Tier II Canada Research Chair in Land Use and Land Cover Change

Understanding the Impacts of Climate Change

Jane Ambachtsheer, Partner and Global Head of Responsible Investment Mercer (Winnipeg)

Elisabeth Bourqui, PhD, Principal, Head of Responsible Investment Canada, Mercer (Montreal)

RI.com: Sweden’s AP1 to raise allocation to ‘real assets’ to combat climate change

SHANNON — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:45:51 +0000

The Swedish Fund AP1 has indicated it will shift its portfolio towards “real assets” – property, farmland, timber and infrastructure – to try to deal with the investment implications of climate change.

It is taking on board the recommendations of the groundbreaking report from consulting firm Mercer,Climate Change Scenarios – Implications for Strategic Asset Allocation, that was released earlier this year. AP1 was one of 14 international institutional investors to participate in the project.

“The findings in the climate report have strengthened the Fund’s conviction in the necessity of raising the share of real assets in the portfolio, for example through investments in real estate, agricultural land, timberland and infrastructure,” AP1 says in its new first-half report.

Read more from Responsible-Investor.com (subscription required).

Trucost: High cost of carbon to Canadian investors

SHANNON — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:39:08 +0000

On January 19, 2011 WWF-Canada released a report highlighting climate change as a new risk for institutional investors, and providing insights in carbon risk assessment of an investment portfolio. The report, Carbon Counts: Assessing the Carbon Exposure of Canadian Institutional Investment Portfolios was prepared for WWF-Canada by Mercer and Trucost to identify the carbon exposure of Canadian institutional pooled investment products.The report provides a quantitative assessment of the carbon impact of Canadian institutional investors’ portfolios by analyzing the greenhouse gas emissions and associated risks generated by the companies held in these institutional portfolios.

RI.com 10/11/30: Institutional investors and climate financing talks at COP16

SHANNON — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 14:59:23 +0000

RI talks with Ole Beier Sørensen, chairman of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, who believes the COP16 international conference on climate change could be the moment when the potential role of institutional investors in financing climate change solutions becomes a serious and practical discussion topic. Ahead of the Cancun conference, a group of 259 investors with combined assets of more than $15trn (€11.1trn) released an investor statement calling for policies to “unlock the vast potential” of low carbon markets. It was the biggest ever investor statement on climate change policy, and in a notable addition to the standard request for long-term policy, the investor statement called for multilateral development banks and other development finance institutions to apply “risk-reducing finance tools” to assist market development and scale up private investment. Read more

SocialFunds.com: Environmental damage cost $6.6 trillion in 2008

SHANNON — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:40:02 +0000

According to a recent analysis by Trucost , the estimated cost worldwide of environmental damage caused by human activity reached $6.6 trillion in 2008, or 11% of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). To put the loss in perspective, it was 20% larger than the $5.4 trillion loss in the value of pension funds in developed countries caused by the global financial crisis in 2007 and 2008.

The findings of Trucost are included in a new report from the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and the UNEP Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), entitled Universal Ownership: Why environmental externalities matter to institutional investors . By 2050, the report continues, “global environmental costs are projected to reach $28.6 trillion, equivalent to 18% of GDP,” in a business-as-usual scenario. Read more

RI.com: Investor Group Issue Climate Change Plea to EU

SHANNON — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:04:53 +0000

The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), a group of investors with some $5trn in combined assets, have issued a dramatic plea on climate change regulation to the European Union.
They are urging the EU to come to a quick decision on whether or not to unilaterally set a more ambitious emission reduction target for 2020. They say significant benefits can be achieved if the EU moves to signal an ambitious longer-term target for 2030 or 2035.
They claim the bloc’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has not yet provided investors with the “strong, long-term price signals” needed to commit to long-term low carbon investments. Read more

REUTERS 10/05/24: Pension wealth at risk as climate priority slips

SHANNON — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:33:01 +0000

Sir Nicolas Stern has warned that pension funds must shift assets into low-carbon energy to drive long-term returns. He told delegates at the Reuters Global Energy Summit that investing long-term in “dirty technologies” is risking clients’ money. Stern, the author of an influential UK government report on global warming and a professor at the London School of Economics, is working with consulting firm Mercer on a project with Norway’s Global Pension Fund on global warming, capital markets and pension fund investors. Read more

RI.com 10/05/06: Investor coalition calls for clean energy shift after BP Deepwater disaster

SHANNON — Fri, 07 May 2010 14:00:28 +0000

In response to the Deepwater Horizon oil leak, which is estimated to be spilling about 5,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, Ceres president Mindy Lubber, said: “Our fossil fuel dependence is increasingly and dangerously unsustainable, economically as well as environmentally, and has enormous social and environmental costs not accounted for in the price of a barrel of crude.”

Ceres coordinates the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), an alliance of more than 90 institutional investors and financial firms that collectively manage nearly $10 trillion in assets. BP, the UK oil giant, which owns the drilling rights for Deepwater, has seen tens of billions wiped off its share price since the explosion on the rig, which killed 11 people.. Read more

Ethical Corp 10/02/19 Climate change: Pension funds still lag too far behind

SHANNON — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:17:01 +0000

To make climate change a material factor in investment analysis and decision-making, pension funds really need to raise their game, argues Rory Sullivan.

In January 2010, the Investor Network on Climate Risk published a report examining how US asset managers take account of climate change-related risks and opportunities in their investment processes. The findings were broadly similar to the findings of similar studies from the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, namely that relatively few investors integrate consideration of climate change risks and opportunities across all of their assets, that investors are still developing the tools necessary to analyse these risks and opportunities, and that the primary focus is regulation, with adaptation receiving relatively little attention. Read more.

Responsible Investor 10/02/2010: Towers Watson chief says integrating ESG could save pension funds 100bps per annum

SHANNON — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:42:07 +0000

The impact of ESG factors on investment returns, [Roger Urwin, global head of investment content at Towers Watson argued], had reached a “tipping point”, based on the progression of climate science and increasing evidence of natural resource depletion. He argued that investing in sustainability mandates could act as a hedge against the potential impact of climate change on other investments in institutional portfolios. Read more.