Climate Data Analysis

📢 New analysis on the leaked EU Omnibus Proposal – What will be the planetary price of simplification? Can Europe combine sustainability and competitiveness? Big changes are certainly coming to the EU’s sustainability reporting landscape. A leaked draft of the European Commission’s Omnibus Proposal suggests major rollbacks in the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), and the EU Taxonomy Regulation. 💡 To help navigate these changes, our put together a comparison table—let us know if it’s useful! Here are some highlights of what’s being proposed: 🔹 𝗖𝗦𝗥𝗗 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 – Only companies with 1,000+ employees and €450M turnover may need to comply (previously 250 employees, €40M). This scopes out 85% of firms previously covered. 🔹 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿-𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱 – Industry-specific ESG reporting rules may be permanently shelved. 🔹 𝗗𝘂𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘄𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗱 – Companies only need to assess direct suppliers, not the full supply chain. 🔹 𝗖𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗹 𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗱 – Under CSDDD, firms won’t face legal consequences for failing to meet sustainability obligations. 🔹 𝗧𝗮𝘅𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗮𝘆 𝗴𝗼 𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘆 (not directly mentioned in the leak) – Instead of mandatory reporting, firms could opt-in, aligning with corporate lobbying efforts. ⚖️ I am wondering about if this is simplification or just plain deregulation. In addition, what will the effects be of a watered-down EU Green Deal for the bloc's sustainability leadership and for firms that have already invested in reporting? How do you see the balance between competitiveness and sustainability? Can we reduce red tape and still protect the planet? Drop your thoughts below! 👇 #CSRD #CSDDD #EU #Sustainability #ESG #SustainabilityReporting #ESGRegulation #Climate #Finance #CorporateResponsibility

Double Materiality 🌎 Beyond compliance with key regulations like CSRD, double materiality assessments are essential for businesses to develop a comprehensive sustainability strategy. This framework helps companies identify how their activities impact society and the environment while also assessing how sustainability-related risks and opportunities affect financial performance. Impact materiality examines how a company’s operations influence people and the planet, covering topics like climate change, biodiversity, and social equity. Financial materiality focuses on how sustainability factors, such as regulatory changes, resource scarcity, or reputational risks, impact business performance and long-term growth. Some issues, like climate change mitigation, resource management, and labor conditions, fall under double materiality, meaning they are significant for both external impact and financial outcomes. By integrating double materiality, companies can align sustainability efforts with business objectives, risk management, and investor expectations, strengthening corporate resilience. This approach ensures that sustainability is not just a compliance exercise but a strategic tool to drive innovation, operational efficiency, and stakeholder trust. It also supports transparent reporting, helping businesses meet increasing demands from investors, regulators, and consumers for credible sustainability disclosures. Sectors like finance, manufacturing, and retail are already leveraging double materiality insights to guide decision-making, investment strategies, and supply chain management. This matrix developed by Vestas in their sustainability report is a great example of how to structure a double materiality assessment, clearly linking environmental and social impacts to financial performance and strategic decision-making. #sustainability #sustainable #business #esg #climatechange #doublemateriality #materiality

📊 Exciting new research from the European Central Bank (ECB) sheds light on how banks are pricing climate risk in their lending practices! 🌿 In their working paper, Carlo Altavilla, Miguel Boucinha, Marco Pagano, and Andrea Polo combine euro-area credit register data with carbon emission information to uncover fascinating insights into the intersection of finance and climate change. 🏦 The study finds that banks are indeed factoring climate risk into their lending decisions. Firms with higher carbon emissions face higher interest rates, while those committed to reducing emissions enjoy lower rates. Interestingly, banks that have publicly committed to decarbonization goals (through initiatives like Science Based Targets initiative) are even more aggressive in this pricing strategy. 💶 But here's where it gets really intriguing: the researchers uncovered a "climate risk-taking channel" of monetary policy. When the ECB tightens monetary policy, banks not only increase their overall credit risk premiums but also amplify their climate risk premiums. This means that during periods of monetary tightening, high-emission firms face a double whammy of increased borrowing costs and reduced access to credit compared to their greener counterparts. The authors argue that while restrictive monetary policy may slow down overall decarbonization efforts, it inadvertently creates a more favourable environment for low-emission firms and those committed to going green. 🌍 These findings are crucial for understanding how the financial sector is adapting to climate change and how monetary policy interacts with climate-related financial risks. It's also clear that the greening of finance is not just a trend, but a fundamental shift in how risk is assessed and priced in our economy. #ClimateFinance #SustainableBanking #MonetaryPolicy #ECB #GreenEconomy #ClimateRisk

The Guardian with three articles on 'The great carbon divide' also based on a report in collaboration with Oxfam Novib: Understanding the role of the super-rich and affluent individuals (the top 1% and 10% by income) in climate breakdown is crucial for successfully stabilising our planet and ensuring a good life for all of humanity. 🌍🌐 The super-rich play a pivotal role in the climate narrative in three significant ways: 🔸 Daily Emissions: Through the carbon they emit in their daily lives, stemming from their consumption habits, including activities such as yacht and private jet usage, and their opulent lifestyles. 🔸 Financial Interests: Through their investments and shareholdings in heavily polluting industries, reflecting their vested financial interest in maintaining the current economic status quo. 🔸 Influence Over Society: Through the undue influence they exert over the media, the economy, and the spheres of politics and policy-making. Carbon inequality is striking (👇): 🔻 The wealthiest 1% contributes more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%. 🔻 The top 10% of the richest individuals (in financial wealth) are responsible for 50% of all emissions (2019 data). 🔻 The middle 40% bears responsibility for 43% of all emissions. 🔻 The remaining 50% collectively accounts for the remaining emissions. A range of policies and ideas presented in the Oxfam Novib report should be implemented to address these issues. Particularly noteworthy are the proposals under 'A new purpose for a new age': ✔ Go beyond GDP ✔ Target and limit growth ✔ End the capture of political institutions and the media by rich individuals and corporate interests ✔ Fully reject neoliberal economics in favour of a proactive role for the state ✔ Rebalance global institutions in favour of the Global South 🌐💡 #ClimateAction #WealthInequality Much more to say about it. Better to read it yourself 😁 Guardian: https://lnkd.in/eHa_xJzQ Oxfam report: https://lnkd.in/eAVhHWun

🌍☀️ The Impact of #ClimateChange: 7.95 Billion People Affected by Rising Temperatures ☀️🌍 A sobering analysis by Climate Central, Inc. reveals a stark reality that demands our attention. In a world of 7.95 billion, climate change has rendered summer temperatures at least twice as likely to reach hazardous levels, a profound shift with far-reaching implications. Why does this matter? It underscores that climate change is no longer a distant threat; it's here and now, disproportionately affecting vulnerable regions, particularly in the developing world. This rapid attribution analysis underscores that we are witnessing the odds being tilted towards increasingly dangerous heat events. 🌎 The Big Picture: During the summer months from June to August, approximately 48% of the global population experienced temperatures significantly amplified by global warming. This past summer was the hottest ever recorded, with July registering as the hottest month in history. In this three-month timeframe, a staggering 6.2 billion individuals witnessed at least one day with temperatures made five times more likely due to human-driven carbon pollution, stemming from activities like burning fossil fuels for energy. 📈 The Climate Shift Index (CSI): This study, based on Climate Central's Climate Shift Index (CSI), provides critical insights. It evaluates observed and forecasted temperatures against simulations that exclude excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. According to this analysis, nearly 2.4 billion people across 41 countries experienced over 60 days of temperatures reaching the highest CSI value, 5. Additionally, 1.5 billion individuals encountered temperatures at a level of 3 every day throughout this summer. 🌏 Unequal Distribution: It's essential to recognize that extreme heat, like many aspects of climate change, is not evenly distributed. Surprisingly, countries with the lowest historical greenhouse gas emissions witnessed three to four times more days with a CSI level of 3 or higher than the world's largest economies. Andrew Pershing, Climate Central's Vice President for Science, points out that even in the Southern Hemisphere's coolest season, temperatures are becoming increasingly challenging to explain without human-caused climate change. #ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #ClimateAction 🌍🌱 https://lnkd.in/eyJnEY_a

I interviewed 20 sustainability managers 🎙️ That's their #1 pain point 🤕 ➡️ "Reporting is 1st. Impact is 2nd". Challenges that I can see with sustainability in companies: ❌ Competing frameworks confuse. ❌ Data collection becomes more important than actual impact ❌ Disconnect between reporting teams and operational teams ❌ Excessive time spent on documentation. ❌ Risk of greenwashing through selective reporting (I am sure you have your observations to add🙄) 5 secrets to turn this into the biggest opportunity for change: ✅ Use reporting to clarify sustainability vision 100%. ✅ Identify in-company 'spoilers' - and engage them! ✅ Change sustainability reporting from 'a burden' for all, to an 'invitation to do good' for each individual. ✅ Turn deadlines into celebration moments for internal change. ✅ Use data requirements as opportunities to understand the entire value chain (and opportunities for change). You know the pain ?🧐 📲 Ping me to re-write the script on your sustainability reporting ♻️ #circulareconomy #zerowaste #sustainability

The World Meteorological Organization has just released its flagship #StateofClimate 2024 report. It shows that the clear signs of human-induced climate change reached new heights in 2024. Some of the consequences may be irreversible over hundreds if not thousands of years. In the short-term - and on an almost daily basis - extreme weather is causing major economic and social disruption. Some key takeaways: 🔹 Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide are at the highest levels in the last 800,000 years. 🔹 Globally each of the past ten years were individually the ten warmest years on record. 🔹 Each of the past eight years has set a new record for ocean heat content. 🔹 The 18 lowest Arctic sea-ice extents on record were all in the past 18 years. 🔹 The three lowest Antarctic ice extents were in the past three years. 🔹 The largest three-year loss of glacier mass on record occurred in the past three years. 🔹 The rate of sea level rise has doubled since satellite measurements began. Read the report: https://lnkd.in/dbs8QRtN

What’s holding back natural climate solutions? Natural climate solutions (NCS)—from reforestation and agroforestry to wetland restoration—have long been championed as low-cost, high-benefit pathways for reducing greenhouse gases. In theory, they could provide over a third of the climate mitigation needed by 2030 to stay under 2°C of warming. But in practice, progress is stalling. A sweeping new PNAS Nexus study reveals why. Drawing on 352 peer-reviewed papers across 135 countries, researchers led by Hilary Brumberg cataloged 2,480 documented barriers to implementing NCS. The obstacles are not ecological. Rather, they are human: insufficient funding, patchy information, ineffective policies, and public skepticism. The result is a vast “implementation gap” between what is technically possible and what is politically, economically, or socially feasible. The analysis found that “lack of funding” was the most commonly cited constraint globally—identified in nearly half of all countries surveyed. Yet it rarely stood alone. Most regions face a tangle of interconnected hurdles. Constraints from different categories often co-occur, compounding difficulties: poor governance erodes trust; disinterest stems from unclear benefits; technical know-how is stymied by bureaucratic confusion. These patterns vary by region and type of intervention. Reforestation projects, for instance, face particularly high scrutiny over equity concerns—especially in the Global South, where land tenure insecurity and historical injustices run deep. Agroforestry and wetland restoration often struggle with the complexity of design and monitoring. Meanwhile, grassland and peatland pathways remain understudied, despite their importance. The study’s most striking insight may be spatial. Countries within the same UN subregion tend to share a similar profile of constraints—more so than across broader development regions. This geographic clustering suggests an opportunity: Supranational collaboration, if properly resourced and attuned to local context, could address shared challenges more efficiently than isolated national efforts. Crucially, the authors argue that piecemeal fixes will not suffice. Because most countries face an average of seven distinct constraints, many from different domains, effective solutions must be integrated and cross-sectoral. Adaptive management—a flexible, feedback-based approach—could help. By identifying which barriers arise at each stage of an NCS project’s lifecycle, it may be possible to design interventions that are not just technically sound, but socially and politically viable. Natural climate solutions still hold vast potential. But unlocking it will require less focus on where trees grow best—and more on where people can make them thrive. 🔬 Brumberg et al 2025. Global analysis of constraints to natural climate solution implementation. PNAS Nexus. https://lnkd.in/gDmYJEph

Insulate or fit a heat pump? The question of how to optimally decarbonise buildings remains a source of fierce debate. My paper with Sam Hamels on how to strike 'optimal' balance between heat demand reduction and heat supply decarbonisation digs into this question in detail. 1/ Around a third of the world's final energy is consumed directly in buildings, mainly for space heating and hot water, and more than 64 % of this is currently provided by fossil fuels. It is therefore impossible to meet climate goals without decarbonising the buildings sector and especially heating. 2/ There are two principal ways to reduce emissions from heating buildings: 1) Reduce heat demand through fabric efficiency and 2) decarbonise the heat supply. The choice between these two contrasting approaches to building heat decarbonisation raises the question of “how far” to go with each approach. 3/ Much of the answer depends on the level of analysis. Optimisation can be done at the level of the individual building, the building stock and society more generally. 4/ Even for an individual building determining the optimal balance in terms of highest cost-effectiveness is far from trivial. In reality few building owners will carry out marginal abatement cost analysis. 5/ Modelling at building stock level typically considers a much wider range of parameters such as costs and benefits related to the energy system including electricity generation, networks and district heating. Most models optimise a specific percentage of carbon reduction at least-cost. 6/ Analysis at societal level takes into account an even wider range of parameters such as employment, poverty alleviation, air quality, fiscal impacts and health. Many of those aspects have previously been included in the multiple benefits of energy efficiency. 7/ So what’s the answer to the question “what is the right balance’? Performing robust analyses to determine the optimal balance is complex and has limitations. We suggest that simple and pragmatic heuristics may serve policy makers better in designing policies and programmes. 8/ In existing buildings that have a very poor energy performance, it is unlikely in any setting that full heat decarbonisation can be achieved by either solely demand reduction or supply decarbonisation at a reasonable cost. In the vast majority of cases a combination of both demand reduction and supply decarbonisation will most likely deliver the optimal solution. 9/ Policies should allow for multiple solutions to decarbonise heating rather than being overly prescriptive, and encouraging synergetic solutions through policy incentives that drive combinations of both demand reduction and heat supply decarbonisation. 10/ Analytical complexity should not result in policy complexity or policy apathy. Given the increasing need to phase out fossil fuels ambitious and clear policies are now more needed than ever. Link to paper https://lnkd.in/eH-jKbKH

Today, a fantastic report "Invisible Women" is published by Impatience Earth, highlighting how climate change disproportionately impacts women in the UK, especially women of colour. This is due to their disproportionate role as carers and heads of single-parent households, lower pay, greater vulnerability to job and funding cuts, and lack of representation in decision-making. Women are also far more likely to be leading effective grassroots initiatives with meaningful climate resilience and adaptation benefits for their communities, yet they are not represented in climate policy decision-making, are ineffectively consulted, and attract less funding from philanthropy. "Single parent mothers, disabled girls and migrant women simply don’t have the microphone when it comes to planning our climate response in the UK." "Time and again, it is invisible women who are leading the grassroots work of building resilience within their communities. It’s now time to fund them." The report is aimed at philanthropic funders and grant-makers, policy-makers and those with influence over climate funding strategies, and anyone who wants to understand the ways that climate change impacts women and marginalised groups in the UK. It was authored by the fabulous Hannah Dillon alongside Yasmin Ahammad, Areeba Hasan, and Sarah Farrell. And I was honoured to have contributed along with Mohammed Afridi, Amber Amoo-Gottfried, Naomi Chapman, Jon Cracknell, Anki Deo, Cliff Fleming, Sarah Fullick, Tatiana Garavito, Sofie Jenkinson, Marcus MacDonald, Misbah Malik, Jess Mally, Bianca Pitt, Olamide Raheem, Daniel Seifu, Martha Dillon, and Jo Williams. Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/etQ_-EZ8