Business Overview

Business is the heart of the story of climate change. A large proportion of Australian and global emissions are produced by the business sector and a large proportion of that by listed companies, many of them listed on the ASX.

The Climate Institute has engaged with the business community at many levels in order to assist those businesses understand the risks associated with climate change and the opportunities that it represents.

The first challenge in business is understanding the data and the drivers of behaviour that create emissions.  At the company level, little data was even understood before the advent of the carbon disclosure project in 2003 that asked the world’s largest companies to provide information on their emissions and emissions strategy. Legislation is growing rapidly worldwide to force companies to disclose their position and this is already in place in Australia.

Perhaps the most important angle from a business perspective is the response of the investment chain. It is this chain that defines the behaviour of investee businesses and that controls the movement of capital between asset classes such as equities, fixed income, infrastructure, private equity, property and hedge funds. It is the investment processes, cultures and decisions that determine whether money is invested in low carbon assets or high emitting assets.

Understanding the investment chain and working with its stakeholders is a key focus of the work of the Climate Institute.

-Julian Poulter, The Climate Institute Business Director