Climate Action 100+ is ramping up its action on climate change by highlighting a further 61 companies for institutional investors to focus on.
The group is comprised of 225 global investors with more than US$26 trillion in assets under management, including several Canadian pension funds, such as the British Columbia Investment Management Corp., the British Columbia Municipal Pension Fund, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the Nova Scotia Pension Services Corp. and the OPSEU Pension Trust.
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Originally, the group set out to highlight the actions of the 100 companies listed on the MSCI all-country world index with the largest combined carbon output as measured by scope one, two and three emissions. Scope one refers to incidental and accidental greenhouse gas emissions from direct company activity. Scope two emissions are generated by the production of electricity used by the company. And scope three includes emissions that occur as a consequence of activities that aren’t directly carried out by the company but are still linked to its business, such as commuting, waste disposal, production and transportation of goods, outsourced activities, contractor-owned vehicles and others.
While the group is committed to engaging with the original 100 companies in order to mitigate these emissions, it has another purpose in mind for its latest list. The list, which represents the companies with climate change issues that can’t be captured merely by emissions data, was identified by the group as being materially significant to their portfolios and presenting significant opportunities to drive the transition to clean energy on a global or regional level, or that may be exposed to climate-related financial risks, including risks to physical assets.
In order to spread the list throughout the world, a minimum of five were chosen from each continent, including Asia, Australia, Europe and North America.
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The largest percentages were from Europe (34.8 per cent) and North America (33.5 per cent), followed by Asia (19.9 per cent). In terms of industry, 24.9 per cent of the list fall into the oil and gas sector followed by utilities and power producers (19.3 per cent), transportation (16.1 per cent) and metal mining (14.3 per cent).