This article is the onsite version of the Moral Money newsletter. Sign up here to have our newsletter sent straight to your inbox. Visit the Moral Money Hub for all the latest ESG news, opinions and analysis around FT. has acquired CWP Renewables, one of the nation’s largest wind farms. London-based Bluebell Capital Partners then asked BlackRock founder Larry Fink to evaluate environmental, social and governance investment factors by the asset manager. Bluebell said he owns only 0.01% of BlackRock’s stock. Still, that campaign is a stunning attack on the world’s largest asset manager. As Kenza warned earlier this week, his COP15, which focuses on biodiversity in response to the COP27 climate summit last month, begins today. Expect a particularly heated debate about the fate of the world’s oceans. At last week’s meeting between Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron, the two called on the United Nations to complete a treaty on the protection of the high seas next year. As I said last month, progress on this agreement hit a wall this summer. Negotiations are resuming in Montreal, and the big political powers that Biden and Macron backed the treaty should be. Critics warn that these credits could enable widespread greenwashing.Also today, Tamami writes about a move to reduce carbon footprint in kitchens in Australia. Bon Appetit. (Patrick Temple-West) COP15 Watch: Biodiversity Credits Raise Concerns
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses delegations at COP15 on Tuesday © AP
One of the biggest issues to be discussed at COP15 going forward is ‘biodiversity offsets’. This is the cousin of the increasingly popular carbon credits. The Development Program and the UK’s International Institute for Environment and Development have published a report in favor of biodiversity offsets (sometimes known as biocredits). For example, building an airport might require destroying a flamingo-inhabited swamp. Developers may use biocredits to try to “offset” wetland destruction by growing similar environments nearby. But the latest version of Biocredit contains serious flaws, Frederick Ash, executive director of the Brussels-based Green Finance Observatory, told me. For endangered species, building habitats in a completely different location allows the wetlands to be cultivated. increase. Schemes that provide offsets “have higher priority on protection” than ecosystems are adversely affected (sorry, Flamingo). “Establishing the status quo,” he suggests, reasoning that “it will also create a new asset class for the financial sector,” he said. Increasingly involved and interested in this area, IHS Markit has added biodiversity credits to various environmental offset registries. We and other his FT colleagues have highlighted the shortcomings of the carbon offset sector, from dubious corporate claims to massive cuts in brokers. Biodiversity credits create more opportunities for disruption and greenwashing due to the wide variety of projects deemed to support biodiversity (from wetlands to rainforests and coral reefs), he said. UNDP and IIED explicitly emphasized in their report that biocredits should not be used “to offset damage elsewhere”. Instead, those instruments could flourish as a new financial asset class in their own right, expanding “private and public funds for conservation in ways that benefit marginalized populations,” they say. Stated. But given companies’ strong desire to offset all stripes and the continued lack of strict rules and guidelines, the risk of greenwashing this young sector is clear. How we are decarbonizing The automotive market is making a successful transition from fossil fuel-powered vehicles to electric vehicles. But in the kitchen, consumers are proving to be much slower to give up on gas stovetops. Lendlease, one of Australia’s largest property developers, has said it will stop providing gas connections to kitchens in new developments by 2030. It also committed to replace all gas appliances in existing buildings by 2040. Lendlease is a campaign launched in Sydney late last month to promote the benefits of electric cooking over natural gas. Part of the Global Cooksafe Coalition. This initiative aims to reduce carbon dioxide and methane emissions that negatively impact both the climate crisis and human health. A study found that a child who lived in a home with a gas cooker was 42 percent more likely to develop asthma, he said, the GCC said. He is an Executive of the Australian Green Building Council and a Director of the World Green Building Council. “Going gas-free from our buildings will make a big difference in the short term.” Efforts to decarbonize kitchens are beginning in the United States as well. Many cities, including San Francisco and New York, have banned gas connections in new buildings. But GCC is unique in that it “brings chefs, developers, suppliers, health professionals and industry associations under one roof,” Lendlease Australia’s head of sustainability Anne Austin told me. Told. A better way to cook than electric. Austin explained that while there are still questions and concerns that are preventing major change across the industry, pressure from investors and customers to Lendlease has led Lendlease to expand its actions in this area. After Australia, the GCC will launch in the EU and UK in April 2023 and in the US a few months later. The battle to get the gas out of the kitchen rages on. (Tamami Shimizuishi, Nikkei) Wise Reading Our colleague Brooke Masters on the ESG tightrope that US companies are being forced to walk amid mounting pressure from regulators, investors, customers and activists Here’s a useful overview from It is part of the FT’s newly published Innovative Lawyers Special Report, which focuses on North America. Lex’s colleague has double his amount of ESG items this week. First, they highlighted how much profit commodity group Glencore makes from coal (and the music won’t stop anytime soon). Second, Lex reported that investors Trillium Asset Management and Impact Shares are asking railroad companies Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern to provide eligible workers with paid sick leave. Newsletter for you Due Diligence — top stories from the world of corporate finance. Sign up here Energy Sources — essential energy news, analysis and insider intelligence.SIGN UP HERE
