UN’s dire warning on climate change. What are the implications for investors?

Earlier this week, the United Nations just issued the starkest warning yet on climate change in a comprehensive report on the state of global climate science. Preti, take us through some of the key findings of this report. I'm going to start with the first key takeaway that the last decade was was hotter than any period in 125,000 years.

 

Sure, Anthony, we know this report is going to be the primary scientific authority in the upcoming climate conference in Glasgow, which is also commonly referred to as the COP26. It's going to happen in November this year where governments will discuss their progress and target setting around climate change. So a few things that we definitely want to know from the report are the one that you just mentioned. The report's first finding is that it is unequivocal that human influences warm the atmosphere, ocean and land, as we can observe in the increase in the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since 1750. And this can be directly tied to human activity, largely the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels as the world became more industrialized. And one of the other major findings is that global temperatures will continue to increase until at least the mid century under all emissions scenarios considered. And this is really serious because global warming of 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees will be exceeded during the 21st century unless we introduce deep reductions in our carbon emissions and other greenhouse gas emissions that are projected to occur in the coming decades. So the Earth has already warmed up 1.1 degree. And it may seem small, but it's significant. And this warming will continue for at least 30 years. Even if we take immediate steps to eliminate emissions. This means that many of the extreme weather events that we are witnessing will continue to worsen until at least 2050 and likely even beyond that. So those are the two that come to mind, which are extremely stark.

 

And I want to touch on reducing carbon emissions because the UN secretary general raised alarm bells, calling the report a code red for humanity and called for action on energy. And he talked about certain things like coal and fossil fuels. Talk to us a little bit about that.

 

Yeah, absolutely. The scientific community has definitely warned us on the consumption of fossil fuel any further. You know, these warnings have been in place for a long time. But now that we're witnessing a lot more effects of climate change, these are becoming a little bit more of a reality for us. So the UN secretary general did issue a statement following the report that we need immediate action on energy and that without deep carbon emission reductions, our ambitions to achieve the 1.5 degrees Celsius that we want to achieve will quickly fall out of reach and jeopardize our efforts to mitigate climate change and its catastrophic effects on the planet and on us.

 

So given what we know today, what do these findings mean for investors in terms of opportunities and risks?

 

There's there's a ton for us to mull over and consider, and I think the investment community has been looking at these issues for some time now. But essentially, not everything is lost at this stage because the scientific community does inform us that there are still opportunities to alter the climate path. Getting to net zero by 2050, which is the most ambitious scenario envisioned by the IPCC, could bring warming back under 1.5 degrees in the second half of the century. So this will likely focus attention on major corporate and sovereign emitters who have not committed to net zero by 2050 yet and those who have committed but have not outlined a credible path to achieving it. So investors will be paying a lot more attention to these emitters. And from an investment standpoint, this report is definitely sounding a death knell for high carbon emitting economic activity, especially consumption of coal and fossil fuels for energy and transportation purposes. And so some more direct sectoral headwinds that we're seeing on the conventional energy industry will become even more pronounced. The report calls for no new coal plants to be built after 2021 and that all OECD countries must phase out existing coal by 2030, with all others following suit by 2040. So if this was not clear till now, it should be clear that coal is the stranded fuel source and any operations related to coal would likely be out of favor of investors. There's some geographic implications as well, and countries with less aggressive plans and targets will face investor scrutiny and are likely to have an effect on their credit rating as well. Countries are being asked to end all new fossil fuel exploration and production and shift fossil fuel subsidies into renewable energy. So there is definitely room for opportunities to scale up, which are also being driven by carbon pricing. Canada itself has targeted a carbon price of around $170 by 2030. So the report recommends that by 2030, solar and wind capacity should quadruple and renewable energy investment should triple to maintain the net zero trajectory by mid century. So I think, you know, this report should definitely be considered very seriously by all investment managers and businesses, as this will definitely define a lot of action. And politics aside, for countries meeting in Glasgow later this year, it is going to significantly impact policymaking as well.

 

Preti, thank you very much for joining us for this very important topic.

 

Thanks for having me, Anthony.