The Green Horizon Summit on 9-11 November, hosted jointly by the City of London Corporation, the Green Finance Institute and the World Economic Forum, involved presentations from around the globe by a stellar cast of world leaders from across government, the regulatory authorities, the business community, including banking and finance, and many more representing civil society. With climate action firmly at the core, the event also profiled broader sustainability initiatives and offered a clear vision of the ambitions being set for COP26 in a year's time.

The Forum opened with Mark Carney, UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and the prime minister's finance adviser for COP26, announcing the publication of priorities for private finance - Building a Private Finance System for Net Zero. This explains that achieving the Paris Agreement objective of lifting global temperature increases to below 2°C from pre-industrial levels will require a whole economy transition, with every company, bank, insurer and investor needing to adjust their business model. It sets the objective of every professional financial decision taking climate change into account and provides a framework for this resting on four pillars - reporting, risk management, returns, and mobilisation. The report draws upon other key initiatives in identifying deliverables for each of these.

Nigel Topping, UK High Level Champion for Climate Action and COP26, also called on leaders to align business models to the inevitable transition. Mr Topping warned that those who join the transition too late may never catch up as it's very hard to chase an exponential curve, drawing attention to the Race to Zero's recently published climate action pathways for a range of sectors.

UK announcements included:

• Chancellor Rishi Sunak MP announcing that the UK, subject to market conditions, will issue its first green sovereign bond next year. The chancellor said that the UK will introduce more robust environmental disclosure standards, with Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) fully mandated across the economy by 2025, and the implementation of a new green taxonomy with the scientific metrics of the EU taxonomy as its basis.
• Business Secretary Alok Sharma MP welcoming a consultation published by the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation outlining the case for international sustainability reporting standards and the ways in which the Foundation might contribute to their development.
• Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey announcing the date of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA)'s climate stress tests as June 2021, covering three different climate scenarios and a range of transition scenarios over a 30-year period.

Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters, in his role as chair of the new Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets, launched the group's first consultation document. The Taskforce was initiated a few months ago by Mark Carney with the goal of bringing all parts of the value chain to work together and to recommend actions for the most pressing pain-points facing voluntary carbon markets.

The Forum also heard from the CEOs and country heads of several banks and insurers, each speaking of the moral and economic imperative of taking action now.  

On a related, but separate note, UK Finance this morning published its white paper on a principles-based framework for the measurement and reporting of multi-year commitments to sustainable finance.

The framework is based around four principles - governance, definitions, measuring the contribution, reporting and disclosure. Our aim in preparing the paper is to help position the industry in readiness for greater definition being given to corporate reporting globally. We have also taken the opportunity to reiterate our support for the Grantham Research Institute initiative on a just transition to a net-zero economy in the UK and have welcomed the UK government announcements made during the Green Horizon Summit.

Sustainability is a priority for UK Finance. As a part of this we understand the need for firms to appraise the training and development support that many of their employees across the business will need. As a contribution, UK Finance is pleased to partner with Finance Unlocked to offer their ESG Learning Pathway (50 per cent off), and with the Chartered Banker Institute in distributing their Certificate in Green and Sustainable Finance (30 per cent off)