Today I attended a virtual workshop on climate change and reporting organised by PWC. This topic is close to us at FGA as sustainable travel is part of carbon neutral commitments and is starting to develop. We do this work through advocacy for sustainable travel policies, working with organisations on ESG commitments, as well as through building net zero or carbon neutral policies in to the business. You can read about our programme supporting this work here: FGA Travel Smart.
There were some clear take aways from the panel discussion which included sustainability and reporting leaders from bp, BT, GSK and Ben Yeoh from RBC Global Asset Management:
As well as much discussion around data, disclosure and collective response, there were some key pieces of work being carried out at supply chain level. GSK mentioning they have 30,000 suppliers and bp mentioning their supplier value is $28 billion, so it is no small task to begin to measure, monitor and reduce GHG emissions and progress work in sustainable contract agreements, but all companies mentioning work is on its way. Gabrielle Giner saying BT have made climate commitments since 2012 and Alice Revels said bp were actively searching for partners to support their 2050 carbon neutral commitments.
Ben Yeoh talked about shareholders asking the executive boards to be accountable on climate at the AGMs and asking what their Net Zero plans are. It was discussed by PWC and shown in the findings below that 76% of board members are engaged but the strategy and knowledge needs to be developed on climate matters.
PWC discussed that this next 10 years is crucial on environment, and that business happens in cycles of 10 years, so it really needs to be this cycle to get us on track with meeting climate goals.
It was an excellent agenda with some great insights and discussion points from the panel. This event and others strongly support our work on activation and moving of finance towards the low carbon industries to support the energy transition.
BT Game Changing Challenge and the 1.5 Supply Chain Initiative were a couple of the programmes mentioned which support the 1.5 degree Paris Agreement targets.
The one to watch for the future is understanding and planning for carbon pricing risk. Prices of carbon are predicted to rise in the comings years which is why prevention such as building in low carbon tech solutions is talked about being the most secure long term strategy for businesses and investors alike.
The recording and reports will be available soon from PWC so feel free to reach out to me on sarah@flygreenalliance.org to discuss this work in more detail.
The conclusion was: galvanise!