Frontline: London's Canary Wharf
At the start of this year, a high-level expert group on sustainable finance provided recommendations to the European Commission as part of its effort to deliver the 40% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 agreed at the Paris conference in 2015.
The Commission recognizes that this may require €180 billion a year in additional investment and that the public sector alone cannot foot the bill. Rather, flows of private of capital must be reoriented.
The Commission has now developed a first series of legislative proposals set to start coming into effect next year. At the core of these proposals will be a new EU-wide classification system, or taxonomy, to give businesses and investors a common language to identify what economic activities can be considered environmentally sustainable.
The aim is to ensure that asset managers, institutional investors, insurance distributors and investment advisers include economic, social and governance (ESG) factors in their investment decisions and advisory processes, as part of their duty to act in the best interest of end investors or beneficiaries.
Missing the target
This may be a welcome first step, but it is hardly radical.