Carbon Tracker are co-hosting  and speaking at this high-level event during COP23.

Watch the livestream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsXqQpwsfiw

Investors have responded to the Paris Agreement and are taking action to accelerate the low-carbon transition and implement the Paris Agreement. This session will showcase examples of how investors, alongside companies and governments, are taking action in terms of low carbon investment, carbon risk management, disclosure, corporate engagement and public policy. Download here the full agenda.

Our CEO Anthony Hobley will be joined by:

Christiana Figueres, Mission 2020

Ibrahim Thiaw, Deputy Executive Director UNEP

Emma Herd, IGCC

Thomas P. DiNapoli, Comptroller or State of New York

Peter Damgaard Jensen, PKA

Stephanie Pfeifer, IIGCC

Fiona Reynolds, PRI

Anthony Hobley’s full speech from this event is  below:

John from BlackRock referred to the fact climate science shows us that climate change is real. Financial analysis is the financial markets’ climate science and it shows us that the low carbon energy transition is real.

Financial based analysis shows us in no uncertain terms that we are now living through an unfolding energy revolution. Not just a revolution but a paradigm shift. Why is quantitative based financial analysis such an important part of telling this story? Because it is much harder to argue with the numbers. And this is one of the best tools we have to take the reality of this transformation beyond the choir to the mainstream, particularly within the financial markets. But I would also argue in governments and beyond.

Some argue that 2ºC isn’t likely or even practical. Regardless, we see technology costs for renewables falling across the board and disrupting incumbent fuels. The technological and financial winner is clear. So, what’s the problem you may well ask? The problem is it is not happening fast enough to deliver our climate goals, a stable climate. We need governments to step up their ambition to speed up the transition that is underway. Telling the positive financial story of this paradigm shift with quantitative evidence is important because it will make it easier for governments to surprise us with such ambition because they will see it will be in their political and financial interest to do so. And this is mutually reinforcing because such ambition sends the market an even stronger signal.

What’s the risk? If this story is not told and told credibly with quantitative evidence we will not begin to bend the curve down by 2020 or achieve the momentum needed to step up our ambition. In such a scenario, our report shows the wrong investments, just in the oil & gas sector could not only waste but destroy £2.3trn, financing emissions along the way instead of the low carbon transition. Investments that make neither climate nor financial sense.

It’s important to focus on mobilising new green finance, but we also cannot ignore the vast sums of capital that could go into projects surplus to 2C requirements. At the same time, we must turn off the finance to emissions and turn on finance to the low carbon transition. In summary to shift the trillions and we must mainstream climate finance.

How can climate related financial disclosure help? It is critical to have quantitative based forward-looking tools to help investors see this transition along with the investment opportunities and investment risks inherent in a business as usual approach. Forward looking scenario analysis is a critical tool to help investors and companies navigate this paradigm shift we are all living through. The future is uncertain. This means that comparability is key. As the TCFD highlighted, investors need a way to compare the risk of one company versus another in a given sector. We have shown how it’s possible to use forward looking, quantitative metrics to compare multiple companies within the fossil fuel sector in our 2ºC of Separation report.

To finish the good news is that we are living through a paradigm shift whereby clean energy competes financially with fossil. Even more mind blowing than that increasingly fossil fuels have to be subsidised to compete with clean energy. The world has quite literally been turned upside down in a good way. Yet we need to speed this up and use it to mainstream climate finance to help investors, governments and companies step up their ambition and shift the trillions.