The UK’s smaller businesses are lagging in net zero push, says British Business Bank October 20, 2021 Smaller businesses are responsible for around half of the UK’s business-produced emissions, according to new research by the British Business Bank. Despite climate commitments like net zero pledges becoming more prevalent among businesses as the government embarks on its ‘green revolution’, only around half of smaller firms have decarbonisation or cutting their environmental impact as [...]
Sustainability Reporting Standards – can the world sing in perfect harmony? October 20, 2021 | City Talk Anne Adrain, Head of Sustainability and Reporting at ICAS, highlights the need for harmonisation in the development of global sustainability standards. In a world where, traditionally, developments in financial reporting have rarely tended to move quickly, the speed with which standard setters have positioned themselves to tackle the issue of sustainability reporting is impressive. But [...]
Legal & General: UK risks locking out lower income households from making net zero transition October 20, 2021 The UK risks missing its net zero target by limiting the climate transition only to higher income households, according to a new report by Legal & General. The government’s new boiler strategy will see £5,000 pound grants given to households to swap out gas boilers for lower carbon options such as heat pumps. However, the move risks locking [...]
Foreign investors pile into London’s green dream, making it the ‘cleantech’ capital of Europe October 19, 2021 London was the leading city in Europe for ‘cleantech’ projects last year, with investors piling into the cause as the UK chases its net zero target and maps its ‘levelling up’ agenda. The UK snagged one in six of all foreign direct investment that came in behind cleantech last year, according to Big Four firm [...]
Most Brits support net zero policies – until they make life more expensive October 18, 2021 The majority of the public support net zero policies, until they curb personal freedoms and make life more expensive, according to new research. Policies like increasing taxes on red meat and dairy rallied the least support across the older generations, while frequent flyer levies failed to pull in younger, travel-hungry, individuals, according to the research [...]
Private equity firms rush to go green as investors dodge climate risky investments October 18, 2021 “Climate risk is investment risk,” the ESG lead at investment heavyweight BlackRock has said, as the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) has outlined not only what countries need to do to hold back climate change, but what they are likely to achieve. To meet the Paris Agreement’s goals, countries will need to retire unabated [...]
Putin could miss COP26 climate conference October 17, 2021 Vladimir Putin has not decided whether to attend the upcoming COP26 climate conference in Glasgow later this month. Russian ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, told Andrew Marr that a decision on the president’s trip has “not been taken yet”. This follows Wednesday’s comments from the Russian premier that he might avoid the conference due [...]
Scottish Power stops staff catching flights in bid to hold back unnecessary emissions October 17, 2021 Scottish Power, one of the UK’s largest energy suppliers, has stopped its workers from taking domestic flights in a bid to hold back emissions. Staff must now travel by rail between the energy heavyweight’s offices in Glasgow, Liverpool, London and other cities in the country, the Telegraph first reported. The moves comes with the UN’s [...]
Carbon emissions rapidly rising in G20 nations October 15, 2021 Carbon emissions are rebounding across the world’s 20 richest nations, says the latest Climate Transparency Report. The freshly released study states that CO2 emissions are projected to rise by four per cent across the G20 this year due to increasing energy demands in developed economies. This year’s rebound is being powered by coal usage, which is [...]
Prince Harry: Africa’s ‘natural beating heart’ needs to be protected from oil and gas drilling October 15, 2021 Prince Harry has said an area known as a “natural beating heart” of southern Africa must be protected with a moratorium on oil and gas drilling. Starting with rivers in Angola, the Okavango flows through Namibia’s Kavango region to a delta in Botswana, with Harry describing it in 2019 as “this magnificent last Eden”. In [...]