News

• Green Climate Fund commits $1bn to new projects

  22 October 2018

  Funding awards for a ‘world first’ developing market green bank and a controversial water project in oil-rich Bahrain have been revealed as part of the latest in the embattled Green Climate Fund (GCF)’s disbursals.

• Sustainability bonds' potential to help meet smart cities investment challenge

  22 October 2018

  The sustainability bond market, including bonds linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has a key role to play in helping to fund ‘smart cities’, an HSBC report said.

• UK government commits additional £80m to green investments

  22 October 2018

  The UK government has earmarked £60 million ($78 million) to fund research and innovation projects that tackle air quality and climate change impacts, as part of its Strategic Priorities Fund.

• Paris rail project plans €31.5bn green bond programme

  22 October 2018

  The French state-owned company developing a rail project in Paris has laid out plans for a mammoth green bond issuance programme worth as much as €31.5 billion ($36 billion).

• Investors pressure oil and gas companies to improve methane disclosures

  22 October 2018

  Investor heavyweights Robeco and California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) have thrown their weight behind an initiative urging oil and gas companies to improve their disclosure of methane emissions.

• People moves: IOSCO, London Stock Exchange Group, Simmons & Simmons, UBS

  19 October 2018

  Peter Damgaard Jensen has been appointed as co-organizer of the newly founded Global Commission on Adaptation. Damgaard Jensen also acts as CEO of Danish pension scheme PKA and chair of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), an investor association taking action to support a low-carbon future.

• Private equity will struggle to implement TCFD, lawyer predicts

  19 October 2018

  Private equity firms will struggle to implement the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) across their many portfolio companies, a lawyer has predicted.

• Fiduciary duty proposal of EU Action Plan could unleash sustainability shift

  18 October 2018

  Plans to reform definitions of investors' duties are the most important part of the European Commission’s Sustainable Finance Action Plan, Environmental Finance’s Green Equities conference heard.

• UK Financial Reporting Council to set up climate lab

  18 October 2018

  A working group to improve company reporting of information related to climate change is to be established by the UK’s Financial Reporting Council (FRC).

• Legislation to clarify fiduciary duty could be mistake, says law firm

  18 October 2018

  Efforts to clarify investors’ fiduciary duty with regards to environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in regulation are misplaced and could “unnecessarily box investors in”, according to law firm Baker McKenzie.