The GFSG asked a group of experts to review nine case studies, among them our ClimateXcellence model. The results suggest that if financial firms do not effectively take environmental factors into account, they may underrate short- and long-term environmental related financial risks.

You can read the report here. For further reading, we recommend the GFSG’s background paper “Enhancing Environmental Risk Assessment in Financial Decision-making”.

In this report, co-authored with 2° Investing Initiative with the support of Allianz Global Investors and Allianz Climate Solutions, we developed a framework for understanding adaptive capacity of companies and the external and internal drivers that may contribute or detract from this capacity. It demonstrates the challenges around anticipating the winners and losers of this game both in the short- and long-run and how adaptive capacity is a zero-sum game.

The CO-Firm, on behalf of the German enterprise’s initiative for energy efficiency (DENEFF), supported by the Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety uncovered why investments in climate protection measures take place (or why they do not) and what property owners need to be able to make better decisions in the future regarding climate protection. We developed a toolset of innovative projects that targets the needs of property owners and enables moving towards a sustainable building stock.

The Federal Government aims at reaching a virtually climate neutral building stock until 2050. Commercial properties – although the number is comparatively small – are responsible for almost half of building related emissions in Germany. At the same time, climate protection measures do not play an important role for this sector. In order to move towards a climate neutral transition pathway and meet the Federal Government’s targets in the Paris agreement, billions of investments in the building sector and in commercial properties are necessary. This opens up great opportunities for the commercial property sector, energy efficiency sector and Financial service providers. Property owners, on the other hand, who do not invest, face great risks.

You can read the Study (German) “Climate friendly commercial properties: property owners, investment processes and new tools for more investments in climate protection” here.

The CO-Firm and 2ii release “Transition-risk-o-meter”

An increasing number of actors demand (voluntary) disclosure of climate transition related risks. These comprise national governments, as in the case of France, and organizations such as the Task-force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).

Within the Energy Transition (ET) Risk project funded by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme The CO-Firm models financial climate transition-related risk for a number of selected sectors and companies, in a consortium with 2° investing initiative, Carbon Tracker, Kepler Chevreux, Institute for Climate Economics (I4CE), University of Oxford and S&P Global.

Building on the TCFD’s recommendations, The CO-Firm and 2° investing initiative developed a „Limited Climate Transition“- and a „Ambitious Climate Transition“-scenario. These scenarios complement and detail assumptions taken by IEA with additional parameters and country-level assumptions, so that the scenarios can lend themselves to climate risk analysis. Key risk drivers comprise production and technology, commodity and market prices, policies and cost incentives up to 2050.

You can read the report here.

On 29^th June 2017, the TCFD, initiated by the Financial Stability Board, published their recommendations report for disclosing climate-related data. You can read the report here: Final Report Recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Disclosures.

Stuttgart, Hamburg, June 2017

The CO-Firm, among others, supported the Institute of Energy Efficiency of the University of Stuttgart with its network for the summer survey 2017, so, that for the first time more than 1.000 companies took part. Since 2013, German industry is asked to name and number ongoing and planned energy efficiency activities twice a year. 75% of German production companies take energy efficiency seriously and make use of very different means to direct their employees’ attention. You can find more details here: http://www.eep.uni-stuttgart.de/eei/

Berlin, Hamburg, June 2017

Referring to the renewal, CDP Managing Director Steven Tebbe commented that “CDP is pleased to renew the consultancy partnership with The CO-Firm GmbH for a further year. The CO-Firm GmbH has a strong track record, working with companies responding to CDP and helping them to implement both good carbon management practices and sustainability into their organizations. We hope our partnership will continue to be a valuable resource to our responding companies.”