Bankers for Net Zero had a busy London Climate Action Week – check out our week below!
On Monday, Business at OECD (BIAC), in partnership with the OECD, hosted an SME and Entrepreneurship Stakeholder Dialogue event. The event was organised to explore the private sector’s role in the context of the overarching theme of the Ministerial, “Managing Shocks and Transitions – Future-Proofing SME and Entrepreneurship Policies.” Setting the scene for the Ministerial, the event provided a rich platform for nearly 200 business, government, and international organizations representatives to share insights and explore pertinent policy measures designed to strengthen SMEs and entrepreneurs.
As Knowledge Partners of the OECD Platform on Financing SMEs, for Sustainability, we underline the important role of finance in enabling SMEs and entrepreneurs to adopt sustainable business models, diffuse sustainable technologies in supply chains and bring innovative green solutions to market.
The full statement can be read here.
Hosted by the London Climate Action Week Secretariat and E3G in partnership with Climate Action, LCAW Live took place on Tuesday, providing an opportunity for global leaders in climate action, for London’s world-leading array of climate professionals and communities, and for leaders in London across all sectors – from government and international affairs, finance, business and law, local government and communities to education, culture and the arts – to connect and create practical solutions to climate change.
LCAW Live brought together over 300 stakeholders from across London’s diverse climate cluster, alongside international leaders and guests attending London Climate Action Week.
The agenda included an opening address, followed by three content sessions: one on Tackling International Challenges with high-level speakers from the US and EU, a panel on how London galvanises global climate action and a final session on green skills/careers.
We were delighted to bring together our valued stakeholders and formally launch Perseus at our flagship London Climate Action Week parliamentary reception!
We welcomed Alex Sobel MP, Louis Taylor (British Business Bank), Elisa Moscolin (Sage) and Gavin Starks (Icebreaker One) who all spoke to the urgency of mobilising private sector capital towards the net zero transition. . The message from our speakerswas clear: Our Perseus programme marks a significant step forward in our collective journey to net zero by enabling automated and trusted emissions reporting for the UK’s 5.9 million SMEs, accounting for £2.3 trillion in turnover and 50% of the UK’s business emissions.
We were also delighted to announce the founding partners of the programme: Sage, NatWest, HSBC, PwC, Tide, Allica Bank, Smart DCC, Connect Earth, Demand Logic, Normative.io, Perse.io, Radiant AI, Enerlytic & Cogo.
On Wednesday, stakeholders and organisations from across the energy and environment sectors met MPs to help inform the new Energy Security and Net Zero Committee’s work.
The engagement event in Parliament gave more than 50 companies and organisations the chance to pitch ideas for inquiries to members of the Committee, which is scrutinising the Government’s approach to securing the UK’s energy supply and cutting emissions.
The ESNZ Committee was set up following the Government’s decision to establish a new Department for Energy Security and Net Zero as part of changes to the machinery of government.
The Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit brought together business leaders and investors globally to drive innovation and scale best practices in sustainable business and finance. Opening the Summit, Mike Bloomberg, Co-Founder and CEO of Bloomberg, said: “We want the planet to thrive and our companies to survive. We can do both, you just have to be intelligent about it.”
The workshop, hosted by Ernst & Young, placed its focus on technology as a good starting point. The panellists highlighted how technology can accelerate decarbonisation since business transformation that is technology-led will be crucial to delivering the insight and innovation needed to make progress on our climate and nature ambitions.
The panellists highlighted that identifying the right data opportunities can be crucial for driving decarbonisation efforts, and the importance of using emerging technologies to develop innovative solutions for decarbonisation. We were glad to see such consensus on how the future is data-driven and how technology and the right use of data will be crucial to enable the transition to a net zero economy.
Thursday saw the launch of the Aldersgate Group’s latest Net Zero Policy Tracker, an assessment of the UK Government’s progress towards delivering net zero. Building upon the last evaluation of progress published in 2021, this document takes a sector-by-sector approach, identifying policy gaps across the economy and making recommendations to address them.
The event centred on the need for Government to be a global leader to the international community, such as setting up an Office for Net Zero Delivery and backing emerging technologies in the renewables sector, we cannot just wait for something like hydrogen to become mainstream as this could take many years – we need to take risks.
Goals House hosted a series of roundtables, dinners, and receptions bringing together local voices, climate leaders, and changemakers dedicated to mobilising the City of London to accelerate global climate action.
This year, they held a screening of ‘The Business of Nature’: a Save Our Wild Isles Business film, developed by RSPB, WWF, the National Trust and Silverback Films.
It explored how to create meaningful content relating to the nature and climate emergencies, and how collaboration can help us to tackle the effects of nature loss on business and society to build a more hopeful future.
At UK Finance’s event on Friday, Richard Barker, member of the International Sustainability Standards Board, gave a speech and Q&A as part of the launch of the ISSB’s new climate and sustainability disclosure standards, IFRS S1 and IFRS S2.
Attended by the trade body’s members, associate members and key partners amongst government and regulators, it ended the week on an optimistic note of international cooperation and public-private collaboration, ushering in a new era of sustainability-related disclosures in capital markets worldwide.
