Topics tagged with 'Green finance'

West African countries pledge $294 billion to fight climate change

4 May 2022

The leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional, political and economic union of west African countries, recently agreed to spend $294 billion over the next 10 years to fight against climate change.

Credit Suisse investors push for faster climate action

27 Apr 2022

A group of Credit Suisse investors pushing for faster climate action at the Swiss bank has more than doubled in size, raising pressure on its board ahead of its annual shareholder meeting on Friday.

IIGCC launches framework to ‘raise bar for investor climate stewardship’

22 Apr 2022

The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) has launched a ‘Net Zero Stewardship Toolkit’, described as aiming to “raise the bar for investor climate stewardship”.

IMF expects 'significant' pledges for new climate, pandemics trust

19 Apr 2022

The International Monetary Fund expects to members to make "significant" pledges of support for its newly approved Resilience and Sustainability Trust during the IMF-World Bank spring meetings beginning this week, a senior IMF official said.

Nasdaq launches carbon removal indices

1 Apr 2022

Nasdaq has launched the world’s first commodity reference price indices tracking the price of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Super Fund teams up with Danes to explore massive offshore wind project

29 Mar 2022

The NZ Super Fund and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners have formed a joint company to explore the feasibility of an offshore windfarm in Taranaki that could supply 11% of New Zealand's current electricity demand.

Biden wants record $11 billion in climate aid to poor nations

29 Mar 2022

President Joe Biden is asking Congress to dedicate $11 billion in taxpayer dollars to help other nations deploy clean energy and withstand the growing consequences of climate change -- more than 10 times the amount lawmakers doled out to the effort in fiscal 2022.

Carbon trading platform launched in Singapore

23 Mar 2022

Climate Impact X (CIX), a global carbon exchange and marketplace, has launched a new, Singapore-based digital carbon credit trading platform called Project Marketplace.

Mark Carney scales back plans as doubts grow over carbon offsets

18 Mar 2022

Former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney’s initiative to boost the market for carbon offsets is being scaled back, in the wake of fierce debate around whether the traded assets really help avert global warming.

Investors launch global climate standards for companies

15 Mar 2022

Investors on Monday launched a 14-point plan of action for companies to stick to or risk having their actions put to a shareholder vote, stepping up pressure on corporate climate lobbying.

NZ Green Investment Finance confident it’s not funding muscle cars

9 Mar 2022

The chief executive of the NZ Green Investment Finance told the Finance and Infrastructure Committee, this morning, that the green bank had sufficient safeguards in place to ensure it didn’t end up funding muscle cars instead of EVs.

Almost all climate-related corporate disclosures are inadequate: CDP

4 Mar 2022

Just 1% of companies who submit climate change-related data to nonprofit environmental disclosure platform CDP provide investors with the information they need to assess whether they have a credible plan for the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Climate risks are wake-up call for sovereign bonds

4 Mar 2022

The government bond market needs to wake up to climate-related risks, according to a report calling for more countries to follow Chile’s lead in issuing debt linked to sustainability targets.

Government commits $2 million to lithium recovery

23 Feb 2022

A government holding company is taking a $2 million stake in Geo40 Ltd to help it upscale is lithium recovery technology at Ohaaki near Taupo.

Green groups slam HSBC's new targets for cutting financed emissions

23 Feb 2022

HSBC has published new targets for reducing financed emissions from its clients in the energy sector, claiming they are "net-zero-aligned". But campaign groups argue that they defer important decisions on coal and could lead to the bank financing oil and gas expansion.

Three banks join initiative for voluntary carbon market platform

21 Feb 2022

Three more banks have joined an initiative to develop a new platform for settling transactions of voluntary carbon credits.

UK renewables auctions to be held annually in green energy push

11 Feb 2022

The UK government has re-stated its faith in green technologies with a decision that it says will create a steady stream of renewable energy projects.

U.S. markets regulator flags risks for ratings firms in ESG boom

8 Feb 2022

Credit ratings agencies face new risks as they throw themselves into the fast-growing business of environmental, social and governance (ESG)-based investing, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) warned in a new report.

Greenflation is real: opinion

3 Feb 2022

Like the cicadas that plague the Atlantic seaboard of the United States every 17 years, inflation has awoken from its most recent hibernation. The hike from about 2 percent in a typical year in the United States to 5.3 percent in the third quarter of this year marked roughly a decade since the last time economists took to op-ed pages and talking head circuits to warn of an uncontrollable rise in prices.

Corporations using misleading climate pledges to greenwash their image

3 Feb 2022

Media Release - Major global companies are avoiding meaningful climate action and are instead using false, misleading or ambiguous green claims, a new report shows.

Investors urge government to support a global climate disclosure regime

27 Jan 2022

The Investor Group on Climate Change says the government should support the creation of a global reporting regime for climate risk disclosures.

Economist proposes carbon backed currency

27 Jan 2022

With alternative coins flourishing and Central Banks designing their own digital currencies, there is a potential hard-backed currency which cannot be ignored: carbon. Using carbon to back a global currency would redistribute wealth, incentivize low carbon technology and avoid the environmental taxes which hit the world’s poor the hardest, writes Australian economist Steve Keen.

Why big central banks are becoming climate warriors

17 Dec 2021

The world’s largest central banks have been joining the fight against climate change, figuring that they can’t ignore the mounting risks of doing nothing. Melting glaciers may be a huge leap from monetary policy, but policy makers say they must respond to threats that have the potential to disrupt the global economy.

World's largest asset managers fail to back climate-action resolutions

16 Dec 2021

Many of the world's biggest money managers have pledged to make their investment portfolios reach net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by the mid-century. But they still aren't using their shareholder voting power to place more pressure on the companies whose stock they own to take action on climate change.

Green finance groups slam HSBC's carbon exit plan

15 Dec 2021

British banking giant HSBC has published a plan to stop financing thermal coal activities but it is being criticised by environmentalists for not going far enough.

Germany approves billions for climate, modernisation fund

14 Dec 2021

The German government on Monday approved 60 billion euros (NZ$114 billion) in funding to be used for combating climate change and modernizing the country, a move that the new finance minister described as a “booster” for Europe's biggest economy.

The politics of climate change and ESG are about to get ugly

14 Dec 2021

2022 will bring another election in the United States, a blessing bestowed upon Americans every 24 months. We’ll hear about the economy, jobs, immigration, wages, vaccines, health care, housing, guns, abortions and — wait for it — climate change and ESG.

Boost for Tuvalu's economic, social and climate resilience

10 Dec 2021

Tuvalu will receive a significant boost with the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approving a US$17.5 million commitment to support its ongoing climate adaptation efforts.

Government incentives for green bonds may be necessary: Reserve Bank

3 Dec 2021

The Reserve Bank has suggested incentives such as tax breaks may be necessary to grow New Zealand’s green bond market at the pace required to combat climate change.

$22-trillion time bomb’ ahead unless banks drop high-carbon investments: Moody’s

30 Nov 2021

Financial institutions are facing a US$22-trillion time bomb due to their investments in carbon-intensive industries, Bloomberg News reports, citing a study last week by Moody’s Investment Services.

Asset owners have little impact in reducing carbon footprints of companies: report

30 Nov 2021

The world’s largest stewards of capital are struggling to move the needle on companies’ carbon footprints and emissions reduction efforts, according to research conducted by EDHEC-Risk Institute.

Housing group takes out top prize at Sustainable Business Awards

26 Nov 2021

Community Finance – a collaboration between philanthropic foundations, financial institutions, community housing provides and the Ministry for Housing – received the supreme award at the Sustainable Business Awards last night.

How a new global carbon market could exaggerate climate progress

25 Nov 2021

Nations are poised to begin building an international carbon market, after finally adopting the relevant rules at the UN climate conference in Glasgow earlier this month.

What's next for the Fed on climate change

24 Nov 2021

The Federal Reserve is poised to increase its climate focus even as President Biden's nomination of Chairman Jerome Powell to a second term disappointed advocates of policies to tilt the economy away from fossil fuels.

ECB warns most EU banks have no 'Paris' climate plan

24 Nov 2021

The European Central Bank (ECB) has warned that most commercial banks it supervises do not have concrete plans to start preparing for climate change.

Big climate change job awaits WTO

24 Nov 2021

From laying down the law on fossil fuel subsidies to promoting low-carbon supply chains, there is no shortage of ways in which the World Trade Organisation could be at the forefront of the global fight against climate change.

$1 million in innovation funding up for grabs

17 Nov 2021

The Westpac NZ Government Innovation Fund has announced a $1 million funding pool to drive innovation around financing and incentivising the decarbonisation of Aotearoa.

NZGIF pumps $40 million into solar

16 Nov 2021

The government-owned New Zealand Green Investment Finance bank is investing up to $40 million in commercial-scale solar installations.

Fixing climate finance: Jeffrey Sachs

16 Nov 2021

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) fell far short of what is needed for a safe planet, owing mainly to the same lack of trust that has burdened global climate negotiations for almost three decades.

Cook Islands calls for new class of climate debt

11 Nov 2021

Cook Islands prime minister Mark Brown has called for climate related debt to be treated differently from national debt.

Climate is the ‘biggest single opportunity’ the insurance industry has ever seen: Lloyd's

10 Nov 2021

CLIMATE is the “ultimate systemic risk” and represents “the biggest single opportunity the insurance industry has ever seen,” according to the CEO of the centuries-old insurance market Lloyd’s.

London Stock Exchange aims to bring firms’ carbon claims ‘out into daylight’

10 Nov 2021

The London Stock Exchange is aiming to make funding for carbon reduction projects more transparent, introducing a new market that it says will help the industry to scale.

Glasgow Conversations: Day 8

9 Nov 2021

On day 8 of COP26, Alastair Thompson attends a Barak Obama talk, a briefing by climate change minister James Shaw, and delves into the important but mind numbingly complicated world of climate finance.

African nations seek talks on $700bn climate finance deal

9 Nov 2021

African nations want Cop26 to open discussions this week on a mega-financing deal that would channel US$700bn every year from 2025 to help developing nations adapt to the climate crisis.

The Warehouse and Westpac NZ Sign $70m sustainability-linked loan

9 Nov 2021

Media Release - The Warehouse Group will have to meet five sustainability performance goals including sustainable packaging, carbon emissions and gender targets to receive discounted rates, under a trailblazing Sustainability-Linked Loan agreed with Westpac NZ.

A $130T climate promise is greeted with suspicion

5 Nov 2021

Political leaders are showering financial titans with praise at global climate talks. But their show of pageantry and back-patting is masking a deeper concern: that the banking industry’s pledges to help fight global warming are vague and unenforceable.

Al Gore warns of a $22 trillion ‘subprime carbon bubble’

4 Nov 2021

Al Gore, the former vice president of the U.S. and the chairman of Generation Investment Management LLP, said the world is witnessing a sustainability revolution and warned that investors caught on the wrong side of history will face losses.

Current carbon market a problem: Mark Carney

4 Nov 2021

The current voluntary carbon offset market is "part of the problem", former governor of the Bank of England and UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance Mark Carney said today at the UN Cop 26 climate summit.

More than $100bn in public investments to be climate friendly

29 Oct 2021

The government has announced a new “responsible investment framework” that will see the more than $100bn managed by Crown Financial Institutions required to be aligned with the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.

733 investors with more than US$52 trillion call for end of fossil fuel subsidies

28 Oct 2021