June 18, 2018: Nico Fettes, CDP’s head of Climetrics, the climate rating for funds, has been appointed to the European Commission’s Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance.
Mr. Fettes joins a group of 35 representatives from civil society, business, academia and the finance sector. The group will begin work in July in sub-committees to assist the Commission to develop four key policy objectives: a new EU classification system – taxonomy – for sustainable activities, an EU Green Bond Standard, a category of new low-carbon indices, and metrics for improving climate-related disclosure. Mr. Fettes will assist specifically with improving disclosure standards.
The technical group’s work is key to achieving the goals outlined in the European Commission’s Action Plan on Financing Sustaining Growth, which aims to harness Europe’s financial system to support a sustainable economy which delivers on environmental and social goals.
It will be chaired by Director-General Olivier Guersent from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (DG FISMA). The full composition of the group is available here.
Mr. Fettes is part of the Investor Engagement Team at CDP, which works with investors to push for environmental disclosure and action from companies, in line with the recommendations of the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). CDP provides investors with the data and insight they need to assess their environmental impact and manage climate-related risks and opportunities.
He leads Climetrics, which publishes ratings of European investment funds to help investors compare funds’ exposure to climate-related risks. Climetrics launched in July 2017 in partnership with ISS-Ethix Climate Solutions.
The rating uses the corporate responses to CDP’s climate change and deforestation questionnaires to score funds’ portfolio companies on their current carbon emissions, exposure to fossil fuels and use of clean technology, as well as their future strategies for managing long-term climate and deforestation risks. In June, it updated its methodology to give higher scores to funds that invest in companies with science-based emissions reduction targets.
Nico Fettes, Project Lead Fund Ratings at CDP Europe, said:
“I am thrilled to contribute to the EU’s work in defining clear, high quality metrics for climate-related disclosures. This group will be instructive in helping to shape Europe’s future financial system and give clearer messages to the real economy that it must transition faster to clean energy sources and low carbon products and services. As we near a tipping point in this transition, investors need standardized and comparable disclosure so that climate-related risks and opportunities can be more deeply integrated into mainstream decision-making.
Steven Tebbe, Managing Director of CDP Europe, said:
“Whether the EU successfully transitions to a low carbon, water-secure and deforestation-free economy relies on investors having access to high quality, financially-relevant information. With CDP providing the most comprehensive and measurable global environmental dataset, our role in this group will be to ensure that capital markets in the EU receive better and more widespread access to information they need to drive a low-carbon, sustainable economy.
-ENDS-
Notes to editor
Joshua Snodin, CDP | Phone : +49 (0)17645910909 | Email : [email protected]
About Climetrics
Climetrics independently rates thousands of funds and ETFs for their impact on climate change and exposure to its related risks. Its ratings are free to search on climetrics-rating.org, making the environmental impact of investments more transparent and enabling investors to consider climate change-related risks when comparing funds.
It looks inside each fund, measuring its portfolio companies' current and future impact on climate change and their exposure to climate risks, in addition to the fund’s investment policy and the asset manager’s governance on climate change. It was developed by two recognized climate specialists: non-profit CDP and ISS-Ethix Climate Solutions, and catalyzed and funded by Climate-KIC, the EU's main climate innovation initiative. Launched in July 2017, Climetrics is the world’s first and only independent climate rating for investment funds, and currently rates over 3700 funds and ETFs for sale in Europe worth €3 trillion - representing 30% of the market. For more information see climetrics-rating.org.
About CDP
CDP is an international non-profit that drives companies and governments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, safeguard water resources and protect forests. Voted number one climate research provider by investors and working with institutional investors with assets of US$87 trillion, we leverage investor and buyer power to motivate companies to disclose and manage their environmental impacts. Over 6,300 companies with some 55% of global market capitalization disclosed environmental data through CDP in 2017. This is in addition to the over 500 cities and 100 states and regions who disclosed, making CDP’s platform one of the richest sources of information globally on how companies and governments are driving environmental change. CDP, formerly Carbon Disclosure Project, is a founding member of the We Mean Business Coalition. Please visit www.cdp.net or follow us @CDP to find out more.