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I have spoken to hundreds of companies this year on their ESG implementation practice. Interestingly, the vast majority of people / teams that are responsible for rolling out ESG are not technical. That’s why when I saw this article by TechCrunch: “Tech leaders can be the secret weapon for supercharging ESG goals” I was excited to highlight the role a technical leader can play. The article emphasises how crutial it is to have CTO’s be part of the planning process when it comes to ESG and outlines a few specific ESG topics which should be on a CTO’s radar. Below I summarise a few specific of the specific ways a CTO can get involved with improving a company’s overall ESG:

1. Make compute workloads more efficient: Make app and compute workloads more efficient will reduce costs and energy requirements, thus reducing the carbon footprint of those workloads. In the cloud, tools like compute instance auto scaling and sizing recommendations make sure you’re not running too many or overprovisioned cloud VMs based on demand.

2. Deploy your compute workload in regions with lower carbon intensity: People who are responsible for infraprovisioning can weigh the CO2 impact versus other factors such as cost and data residency before they deploy. 

3. Consider societal benefits in product roadmap planning: By thinking about sustainability and societal impact as a core element of product innovation, there is an opportunity to differentiate yourself in socially beneficial ways. It is also important to consider practices such as responsible AI.

4. Consider diversity and inclusion with technical hires: Reinforce and demonstrate why diversity, equity and inclusion is important within a technology team. Understand your gaps and monitor improvement overtime. 

Anyone seen a good guide for improving ESG for technical leaders? I’ve seen very few resources on this topic so I would love to highlight some strong posts!

\\ Nossa News \\

ESG Activism and Calls for Action 
Andrew Archer is a Partner at Investor Update and Head of the ESG Advisory business. He has over 25 years of experience in Financial Markets, with a background in Fund Management, Equity Analysis and Corporate Broking with extensive knowledge on the Resources and Utilities sectors. In his latest published paper, ‘Staring Down the Barrel of ESG Activism’, Andrew speaks to some key figures and highlights the opportunities that arise from ESG Activism. We speak to Andrew about his new role at Investor Update and his recent paper.
Read our interview.

\\ Top Stories \\

Distressed Credit and The ESG Opportunity
Lenders and sponsors are increasingly incorporating ESG in investment decisions, and distressed investors can harness restructuring to drive sustainability and inclusion and with it long-term value creation. There are four reasons why restructuring can catalyze sustainability and inclusion. 

1. Restructuring involves a corporate reset. 

2. Improving ESG performance can reduce the cost of borrowing for distressed companies.

3. Increasing ESG disclosure facilitates investor sourcing of ESG ideas for distressed companies.

4. Using an ESG lens may help credit investors identify potential inflection points in issuers’ ESG momentum. 

Forbes.

1. Progress to Net Zero

2. The importance of Nature

3. The growth of sustainable energy and mobility

4. A continued rise of social justice and equality. 

World Economic Forum.

 
Will ESG Prevent The Next Enron?
Enron shows the importance of assessing governance — one of the three legs of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing. Had more investors and stakeholders demanded transparency and oversight, the crimes might have been caught earlier and the damage limited. But the scandal can serve as a larger analogy. As the push for assessing companies’ sustainability and contribution to the greater good continues to accelerate across sectors and countries, management should consider their approach to ESG like they do financial accounting. If they don’t acknowledge their industry is structurally changing and forgo investment in new practices, products and workforce training, they face falling behind peers. Sticking with energy as an example: If a traditional thermal coal company doesn’t consider transitioning to other types of power generation, its business model will likely become outdated and less valuable over time. This could hold back growth and potentially strand assets and obsolete infrastructure. 
Forbes.  


How sustainable are sovereign wealth funds?
The world's biggest SWFs are making only patchy progress in adapting investment plans to account for environmental, social and governance factors, according to data on energy investments, an ESG analysis of the equity holdings of some of the funds, plus a survey of the players. The industry has invested $7.2 billion in renewable energy since 2015, for example, less than a third of the amount poured into oil and gas. New Zealand also said it planned to cut the emissions intensity of its overall portfolio by 40% by 2025, referring to a measure of emissions proportional to revenue. Middle Eastern funds face a tougher task to decarbonise their portfolios, given their economies' longstanding reliance on fossil fuels. They did not disclose climate targets, although most are planning to beef up their ESG focus.
Reuters.
 

\\ Report Highlight \\

Who is the IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations that is dedicated to providing the world with objective, scientific information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of the risk of human-induced climate change, its natural, political, and economic impacts and risks, and possible response options.

What is important about this report? During its three decades of existence, the IPCC has shed light on climate change, contributing to the understanding of its causes and consequences and the options for risk management through adaptation and mitigation. In these three decades, global warming has continued unabated and the world has witnessed an acceleration in sea level rise. Emissions of greenhouse gases due to human activities, the root cause of global warming, continue to increase, year after year. Five years ago, the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report provided the scientific input into the Paris Agreement, which aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels.

What will the report have? The report consists of a short Summary for Policymakers, a Technical Summary, five Chapters, and Annexes, as well as online chapter Supplementary Material.

Some highlights:

Schematic of report story line

Indicative linkages between mitigation options and sustainable development using SDGs 

Summary of projected risks

Read the full report.

Other interesting reports: 

Point of No Returns, Part IV - Biodiversity. An assessment of asset managers’ approaches to biodiversity. By ShareAction. 

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