GLASGOW : The hard-fought Glasgow Climate Pact sent a clear message to global companies and executives: reassess business strategies and carbon footprints to reap monetary rewards, or lag and risk losses.
"COP26 has unleashed a wall of new private sector money," said Gregory Barker, executive chairman at energy and aluminium company EN+ Group, by email."For business everywhere, one thing is certain, big change is coming and coming fast." Adding to the pressure, financial services firms with around US$130 trillion in assets have pledged to align their business with the net-zero goal. Increasingly, they will lean on the boards of corporate climate laggards.The summit’s deal resolving rules for the global trading of carbon offset credits was applauded by business for its potential to unlock trillions of dollars in finance to help countries and companies manage the energy transition.
A global price would allow companies to more accurately assess the value of assets, as well as costly externalities - driving more climate-aligned decisions on anything from where to build factories to which companies to buy or products to launch. Calling the move"dangerous and damaging for the climate," Germany’s biggest industry association warned it could hobble its industries as they are forced to abandon the cheap fossil fuel international competitors can still use.