ESG News in Brief (5/2/2023 - 11/2/2023)

Comcast Issues its First $1 Billion Green Bond

On February 9, Global media and communications company announced its first green bond offering, raising $1 billion, with proceeds from the 10-year bond aimed at supporting the company’s environmental sustainability goals, including its target to be carbon neutral by 2035.The offering follows the publication last month by Comcast of its Green Financing Framework, outlining eligible use of proceeds for green bond offerings, as well as the guidelines for project evaluation and selection, management of proceeds, and reporting obligations.

Professional services firm EY announced today the acquisition of Attalea Partners, a provider of ESG consulting services to private equity funds and investee companies. EY said that the transaction aims to boost the firm’s ESG capabilities in the area of transactions. Founded in 2019, Madrid-based Attalea focuses on the strategic management of sustainability as a lever for creating financial value, with services including ESG Due Diligence, ESG strategy and action plans for investee companies, climate change strategy, and sustainability disclosure and taxonomy compliance support.

Investment data and research provider MSCI announced today the launch of MSCI Corporate Sustainability Insights, a new solution aimed at enabling sustainability executives at listed companies to set ESG and climate goals and track progress, and to compare their sustainability data against peers.

EIB Vice-President Kris Peeters said: “The EIB, the EU climate bank, confirms its support to India in delivering its commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement, creating a partnership on climate action that benefits India, the European Union and the entire world.

Founded in 2019, Madrid-based Attalea focuses on the strategic management of sustainability as a lever for creating financial value, with services including ESG Due Diligence, ESG strategy and action plans for investee companies, climate change strategy, and sustainability disclosure and taxonomy compliance support.

Global professional services firm KPMG and business data and reporting solutions provider Workiva announced today an expanded partnership focused on providing ESG data and reporting solutions and services.

The proposed regulations also put increased pressure on greenhouse gas emission disclosures, requiring companies to report on not only their direct emissions (Scope 1) and emissions from purchased energy (Scope 2), but also, in some cases, emissions across their entire supply chain (Scope 3).

Though the proposed federal regulations are being challenged in court, it is clear that real estate organizations in the U.S. will need to adopt a more formal approach to disclosing their ESG performance and climate risks in order to remain competitive in the industry.

ESG issues were initially added to the division’s priority list last year, following a risk alert issued in 2021, highlighting observations from its examinations that uncovered several potential ESG-related problem areas, including portfolio management practices that did not align with disclosures about ESG approaches, inconsistencies between ESG-related proxy voting claims and actual practice, and compliance programs that didn’t address adherence to the firms’ stated ESG frameworks, as well as instances of marketing materials that made unsubstantiated or potentially misleading claims regarding the risk and reward characteristics of ESG investing.

Recently, the domestic financial information research institution Wind (Wind) announced the 2022 Wind ESG Best Practice Listed Companies List, and the local company Hengan International was selected for the 2022 Wind ESG Hong Kong Stock Industry Best Practice Award (daily consumption) list. Since 2017, Hengan has released ESG reports for six consecutive years. In the future, Hengan will continue to focus on quality innovation, environmental protection, energy conservation and emission reduction, personnel training, safety and health, and public welfare and charity, adhere to the road of sustainable development, continue to promote the high-quality development of corporate social responsibility and public welfare undertakings, and do our part Responsibility, laying a solid foundation for the realization of the enterprise's goal of "100 billion yuan in one hundred years".

In order to better serve the development of green transformation of enterprises, promote climate investment and financing, and establish a financial risk management mechanism adapted to the development of carbon neutrality, China Energy Conservation Association will hold the first China Carbon Finance Forum in Shanghai on April 19-20, 2023 with the theme of "Reduce Carbon, Increase Gold and Empower Green".

The forum will invite decision makers from government departments and related units, ecological and environmental experts, economists, middle and senior level of investment institutions and executives from carbon market related service institutions to share the best academic and practical resources in the field of finance and carbon asset management from policy, academia and industry, comprehensively analyze the carbon finance system with Chinese characteristics, draw on the latest international carbon finance practices, explore and analyze carbon The conference will provide a comprehensive analysis of the carbon finance system with Chinese characteristics, draw on the latest international carbon finance practices, explore and analyze the problems and opportunities facing the development and application of carbon finance products such as carbon funds, carbon bonds, carbon insurance and carbon trusts, and jointly explore opportunities for carbon finance to promote green and low-carbon investment and financing, so as to achieve win-win synergy between high-quality economic development and carbon emission reduction and truly achieve high-efficiency and low-cost carbon neutrality.

On February 4, the launch ceremony of Building a National Green Development Demonstration Zone in Beijing's Sub-urban Center was held in Tongzhou District. This marks that the Beijing Green Exchange, the only national-level green exchange, has officially settled in the sub-center of Beijing. In the future, it will be built into a national-level green exchange facing the world, and comprehensively promote the construction of the sub-center of Beijing into a national demonstration zone of green development.

In the future, Beijing Green Exchange will serve as a national voluntary greenhouse gas emission reduction trading center, as well as the infrastructure of a global green finance and sustainable finance center, providing services to more emitters or entities. Companies can be listed and traded through voluntary emission reduction projects and receive a variety of support, including real money.

According to the Environmental Protection and Assets Supervision Commission, it is recommended that the revision of the Renewable Energy Law be included in the legislative plan and the annual legislative work plan of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress to implement the decisions and arrangements of the CPC Central Committee. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration have proposed that renewable energy has entered a new stage of rapid development, and the comprehensive absorption capacity has become the main factor restricting its sustained and rapid growth. They have revised the renewable energy Law, further rationalized the absorption mechanism of renewable energy, strengthened the overall planning of power grid construction, and improved land policies for renewable energy. It is of great significance to promote the sustainable and healthy development of renewable energy and optimize the energy structure.

Global and Chinese coal consumption rose in 2022, as Europe and China returned to coal due to changes in the international energy landscape. Under the influence of Russia-Ukraine conflict and other factors, energy supply, sales price and future expectations, including coal, have undergone great changes. Many countries or consumers have turned to coal from other energy sources, which has caused changes in the production and marketing situation of the international coal market, coupled with the influence of various factors such as the reduction of hydropower and nuclear power output. In 2022, global coal production and international coal prices hit record highs. The difference is that Europe is more passive adjustment in the absence of energy independence, the fierce competition between neighboring energy sources, and the overall negative economic situation. But in our country, we mainly adjust actively according to our own economic and social development needs, give consideration to the actual situation of social production and life, and combine the long-term development goal. Despite periodic increases in the world's and China's total coal consumption, there has been no fundamental change in the general trend towards a green and low-carbon transition.

World Bank and Ethiopia Sign $40 Million Agreement to Cut Carbon Emissions Through Sustainable Landscape Management

Ethiopia has signed a landmark agreement with the World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (ISFL) that rewards community efforts to reduce carbon emissions by tackling deforestation and land and forest degradation.The Emission Reductions Purchase Agreement (ERPA) unlocks up to $40 million that will help communities, government, and stakeholders to reduce carbon emissions and increase carbon sequestration through forest preservation and other environment-friendly land uses. This ERPA marks the first of its kind for ISFL, which will reward efforts to reduce around 4 million metric tons of CO2e [Carbon Dioxide equivalent] emissions through 2030 under Ethiopia’s ambitious Oromia Forested Landscape Program.

A few days ago, the IMA Institute of Management Accountants, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Beijing National Accounting Institute jointly conducted research on ESG reports and climate change-related information disclosure of "A+H" listed companies, and jointly released a research report. The research takes 140 listed companies listed on both A-shares and H-shares as of December 31, 2021 as the research sample companies, and the overall disclosure and mandatory disclosure of their ESG reports in 2021, as well as the adoption of the TCFD framework for climate change analysis. This paper analyzes the situation of information disclosure related to changes, and deeply explores ESG reporting practices and the current situation and development trend of information disclosure related to climate change, aiming to provide reference for Chinese listed companies and regulatory agencies.

On February 10, AECOM, an internationally renowned all-round integrated service provider for infrastructure, released the industry's first "White Paper on Urban ESG Development" - "White Paper on New Urban Competitiveness Strategy Research" in Chengdu. In a large dimension, it has conducted in-depth exploration and thinking for the sustainable development of cities in western China.

信中还指出，FCA 将重点确保资产管理公司的治理机构的结构能够监督和管理有关产品开发、投资过程中的 ESG 和可持续性整合、ESG 信息提供者以及公司提出的其他可持续性声明的信息。

Investment data and research provider MSCI announced today the launch of MSCI Corporate Sustainability Insights, a new solution aimed at enabling sustainability executives at listed companies to set ESG and climate goals and track progress, and to compare their sustainability data against peers.