Climate Data Analysis

Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions 🌎 In the pursuit of net zero targets, transparency in emissions reporting is key for organizations. A believable claim to net zero requires clear communication about the organization's total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the methods used to measure them. The initial step in this journey is for an organization to quantify and understand its GHG emissions, which are broadly classified into three scopes: ▪ Scope 1: Direct emissions from owned or controlled sources. ▪ Scope 2: Indirect GHG emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, steam, heat, and cooling consumed by the organization. ▪ Scope 3: All other indirect emissions that occur in the value chain of the organization, both upstream and downstream. Comprehensive GHG accounting of both operational footprint (scopes 1 and 2) and the wider indirect emissions (scope 3) forms the basis of this understanding. Additionally, organizations must verify their consolidation and boundary-setting approaches to ensure accurate and complete emissions reporting. Conducting a hotspot analysis is also crucial to pinpoint where the most significant emissions occur within the operations and value chain. Regular measurement of emissions is an essential practice for organizations on the path to net zero, enabling them to track progress, identify opportunities for reduction, and demonstrate real commitment to a sustainable future. Source: South Pole #sustainability #sustainable #climatechange #climateaction #netzero #emissions #transparency

🌍 Ten Years After Paris: is the Climate Crisis a Disinformation Crisis? In 2015, the world made a historic promise: to keep global warming well below 2°C, and ideally below 1.5°C. We committed to major emission cuts by 2030, and net-zero by 2050. The Paris Agreement marked a new era of global climate cooperation. But ten years on, we're still struggling with cooperation while the World Meteorological Organization tells us that the Earth’s average temperature exceeded 1.5°C over a 12-month period (Feb 2023–Jan 2024) for the first time. Why? 🔍 A groundbreaking new study, led by 14 researchers for the International Panel on the Information Environment, reviewed 300 studies from 2015–2025. The findings are alarming: powerful interests – fossil fuel companies, populist parties, even some governments – are systematically spreading misleading narratives to delay climate action. 🧠 Misinformation isn't just about denying climate change. It’s now about strategic skepticism – minimizing the threat, casting doubt on science-based solutions, and greenwashing unsustainable practices. 📺 This disinformation flows through social media, news outlets, corporate reports, and even policy briefings. It targets all of us – but especially policymakers, where it can shape laws and delay critical decisions. 💡 So what can we do? 1️⃣ Legislate for transparency and integrity in climate communication. 2️⃣ Hold greenwashers accountable through legal action. 3️⃣ Build global coalitions of civil society, science, and public institutions. 4️⃣ Invest in climate and media literacy for both citizens and leaders. 5️⃣ Amplify voices from underrepresented regions – like Africa – where more research is urgently needed. We must protect not only the planet’s climate, but the integrity of climate information. 🔗 Read more on how disinformation is undermining climate progress – and what we can do about it: https://lnkd.in/eDN9hKAJ 🕰️ The window is small. But with truth, science, and collective action, we can still turn the tide.

#Climate reporting is dead. Long live 氣候揭露! [with a #DoubleMateriality cherry on top] ICYMI, late last year, the Chinese Ministry of Finance released 企業永續揭露準則第1號－氣候 (试行) | Corporate Sustainable Disclosure Standard No. 1 – Climate (Trial). The Chinese standard aligns with IFRS’s S2 climate reporting standard, but importantly includes the requirement to report on both how climate change affects a company’s finances as well as the impact of their business activities and value chains on the environment. Also notable that whilst the Ministry has said the new standard will at first be voluntary, in time it will expand implementation “from listed companies to non-listed companies, from large enterprises to SMEs, from qualitative requirements to quantitative requirements, and from voluntary disclosure to mandatory disclosure.” This new reporting standard is particularly relevant for Aotearoa #NewZealand given China’s position as one of the country’s most important trading partners, and the rapidly shifting geopolitical sands. The standard’s release also reinforces calls for NZ companies impacted by the recent rollback of domestic #ClimateReporting requirements to continue building on the foundations of recent years, understand and focus on where the process can best derive strategic value, and prepare for the inevitable requests from international value chains and customers captured by their reporting regimes.

PhD thesis submitted! My work explored how the pharmaceutical industry can play its part in addressing climate change. Pharmaceuticals are estimated to account for up to 55% of national health systems’ greenhouse gas emissions. There is little research about how pharmaceutical companies are navigating their climate impact, or what shapes their approach to reducing it. I analysed company documents from multinational pharmaceutical companies and conducted in-depth interviews with people working in pharmaceutical companies, industry groups, and health systems. Using a method called argumentative discourse analysis, I examined how people talked about climate action and how these ways of talking influenced real-world practices. What I found: 1. Climate action was often framed as secondary to patient wellbeing, with some viewing climate action as a potential risk to care. This framing was often in the absence of evidence of patient harm from climate action and reflected a narrow understanding of patient wellbeing – one underpinned by reactive, pharmaceutical-dependent modes of care rather than proactive and preventive approaches to health. Some recognised this, and framed climate action as essential for protecting health. 2. Many saw climate action as dependent on financial viability. This was challenged by those arguing that climate action should not hinge on profitability. My findings showed that it is becoming increasingly more financially advantageous to engage with climate action – from a regulatory, market advantage, operational resilience, and reputational perspective. 3. Carbon footprint quantification, disclosure, and data were presented as key steps to climate action, but measuring and reporting this data often became an end in itself rather than a means to an end, reinforced by regulatory and procurement demands for data rather than reductions. Some warned this focus risked delaying actual reductions. 4. Collaboration was widely called for – across supply chains, with regulators and policymakers, and wider health system actors – but was often left vague, aspirational, or used to shift responsibility elsewhere. These narratives can unintentionally slow progress towards net zero. However, alternative narratives already exist. By reframing climate action as integral to patient care, recognising and reinforcing the business case for climate action, focusing on reduction over quantification and reporting, and surfacing and navigating tensions to drive productive collaboration, the pharmaceutical industry and wider health systems can take a more decisive role in tackling climate change. Climate action in health care is not just a scientific challenge, but also a social, organisational, economic, and political one. Changing the stories we tell about climate change and action may be just as important to drive progress towards net zero. (P.S. this is a very basic summary of 272 pages of work! More publications - and Viva - to follow!)

Today, we -- an international team of over 60 scientists -- published the annual update of the Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC) initiative. What is this initiative? And what does it say? At regular times, IPCC delivers the world’s most authoritative assessment of climate change. However, these assessments are not very frequent and the latest was published in 2021. With greenhouse gas emissions and global warming continuing to rise, trustworthy up-to-date information on climate change is more important than ever. The IGCC initiative fills this gap. A whole set of indicators is updated by IGCC. The figure shows an overview, but here are some highlights: - Record high levels of greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to build up in the atmosphere driven by record-high global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.  - This causes global warming caused by human activity to increase. Human-induced global warming reached a record 1.22°C over the past decade and 1.36°C in 2024. Uncertainty ranges around the 2024 value of 1.1-1.7°C already encompass the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C limit.  - This global warming caused by humans was the main contributor to 2024’s record temperatures and is advancing at 0.27 °C per decade – the highest rate since records began. - Finally, the more global warming we experience, the smaller the carbon budget that remains to limit warming to a specific warming limit. Importantly, the budget for keeping warming to 1.5°C with 50% chance has been reduced from 500 billion tons of CO2 starting from 2020 in the IPCC report, to 130 billion tons starting from 2025. That amounts to 3 years of current emissions. For all the details, see the open source publication online: https://lnkd.in/dBhc73aN

New research models the likelihoods of different climate scenarios. It shows that 3°C isn’t a worst-case. It’s the most likely. Up until now, climate scenarios have been treated as narrative pathways without assigned probabilities. Climate scientists have resisted giving scenarios a likelihood because of deep uncertainty. That is, the full range of outcomes due to physical, social, political and technological changes can't be known, and therefore, probabilities cannot be reliably estimated. Climate scenarios were described as exploratory tools, not forecasts and were designed to illuminate plausible pathways, not predict them. But... intuitively, we know that some climate futures are more likely than others. This information is helpful for business decision-making. This new paper from the EDHEC Climate Institute challenges the idea that probabilities can't be assigned to climate scenarios and provides two robust, data-driven methods to do it. The first is an 'informative method', which starts with economists’ views on the social cost of carbon (SCC). In effect, it converts wishful thinking into plausible expectations. The second is a 'maximum entropy method'. It makes as few assumptions as possible, using current carbon prices and basic policy constraints as the only inputs. What’s remarkable is that both approaches produce results that are very similar. Does this mean that some climate pathways are more locked in than we think? Model outputs: 🔸 The most likely temperature anomaly in 2100 is between 2.8–3.0ºC 🔸 There is a 35–40% chance of exceeding 3.0ºC 🔸 There is just a 1% chance of staying below 1.5ºC The model was also tested using Oxford Economics scenarios. The results were even more shocking. 🔸 The ‘Climate Catastrophe’ carries a likelihood of 57.5%. 🔸 The ‘Climate Distress’ scenario carries a likelihood of 35% 🔸 Together, they make up 92.5% of the total These high temperatures increase the likelihood of triggering irreversible tipping points, for which standard damage functions no longer apply. This is dangerous territory. 𝗠𝘆 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲 Most companies use climate scenarios that treat all futures as exploratory scenarios. But this doesn't allocate future risk efficiently. Without probabilities, we cannot optimise capital allocation between mitigation (transition risk) and adaptation (physical risk). Assigning probabilities to scenarios changes the conversation. It equips firms to weigh investment in risk reduction not just by severity but also by likelihood. Personally, I believe this is a critical next step in climate risk planning. Assigned likelihoods should be accompanied by uncertainty bounds—so decision-makers can assess not just what’s likely, but how confident we can be in those estimates. Source: https://lnkd.in/exy5TDS8 _____________ 𝘍𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘦𝘥𝘐𝘯: Scott Kelly

🔍 New research reveals a sharper picture of the climate–economy connection: 📉 Climate change will likely hurt economic growth more severely than we thought. 📈 Meanwhile, the economic case for investing in climate action is stronger than ever. 𝐈𝐧 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭: 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞—𝐢𝐭’𝐬 𝐚 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐜 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲. It delivers near-term growth while significantly reducing long-term losses. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 Key takeaways from this paper ( 👉 https://lnkd.in/eZfKSq_x): 🟣 Most economic models assume climate change only affects a country's economy through local weather—but what if global weather disruptions matter more than we think? 🟣New research adds global weather variables to three major climate-economy models and finds: 🟣 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥 𝐆𝐃𝐏 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐛𝐲 𝟐𝟏𝟎𝟎 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 (𝐒𝐒𝐏𝟓-𝟖.𝟓) 𝐣𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 ~𝟏𝟏% 𝐭𝐨 ~𝟒𝟎% 💥 Why? Because we're more interconnected than ever. Climate extremes in one country now: ➿ Ripple through global supply chains 🟪 Impact trade, food security, inflation, and more 📊 When these insights are plugged into the DICE 2023 integrated assessment model (see figure below 👇 ): The “optimal” level of warming for policy drops from 2.7°C ➡️ 1.7°C— aligned with the Paris Agreement, and Recommended carbon pricing and emissions cuts become far more ambitious In addition, the OECD - OCDE published a new paper ( 👉 https://lnkd.in/e6qJ6tuM) where they show that stronger climate targets (NDCs) could boost global GDP by 0.2% by 2040: ⚡ Low-carbon investments cut emissions intensity & drive productivity 💰 Policy clarity attracts investment—inaction could cost 0.75% of GDP by 2030 🌡️ Act now to avoid climate shocks: up to 13% GDP gain by 2100 if we enhance NDCs Climate action isn’t a cost—it’s a wise investment in future prosperity 🌱

Sustainability Reporting Isn’t a Maze Anymore — It’s Becoming a Map. This chart shows the most important shift in sustainability disclosures: consolidation. For years, organizations were overwhelmed by overlapping frameworks (GRI, SASB, TCFD, CDP...) — but now, we're seeing convergence led by IFRS and its ISSB board. Why does this matter? - Less confusion, more clarity. The consolidation under IFRS and ISSB is pushing toward a global baseline for sustainability reporting. - TCFD’s influence lives on in the climate focus of ISSB, which many jurisdictions are adopting as mandatory. - GRI complements ISSB by covering broader impacts beyond investors — making dual reporting the new gold standard. Understanding this ecosystem helps businesses future-proof their reporting strategy, no more guessing which standard to follow. Now it’s about aligning with the ones that are shaping the global narrative.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has just presented its much-anticipated Advisory Opinion on climate change. The highest judicial body of the UN has spoken very clearly: States have a legal obligation to protect from harm caused by climate change! 1️⃣ The Opinion makes clear that states that are party to the UNFCCC "have an obligation to adopt measures with a view to contributing to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate change." 2️⃣ The Court clarified that obligations also exist under customary international law. This could have consequences for states that are not (anymore) party to the Paris Agreement (such as the U.S.). 3️⃣ "Failure of a State to take appropriate action to protect the climate system from GHG emissions — including through fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies — may constitute an internationally wrongful act which is attributable to that State." 4️⃣ The Court made a clear link between between human rights and climate change. "[T]he human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is essential for the enjoyment of other human rights." While not legally binding per se, this Advisory Opinion carries significant legal and political weight. The Opinion interprets binding international law to which countries have already committed. Courts are likely to treat this Opinion as a persuasive authority, and it will impact rulings that have binding effect under national or regional legal systems. ❗ From now on, climate inaction by governments does not just reflect another policy failure, but it can be seen as a breach of international law.

When J.P. Morgan starts pricing something, the world pays attention. 😲 This week, that something is climate tipping points. 🚦 🔬 The science has been there for decades. Johan Rockström and the PIK - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research mapped 16 climate tipping points, of which 5 are already at risk of crossing tipping points at current levels of global warming: the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, the North Atlantic subpolar gyre circulation, warm-water coral reefs, and parts of the permafrost. 🌊 🚨 Scientists wrote the papers, gave the warnings, appeared at the conferences, and the corporate world listened politely and moved on, because tipping points are nonlinear, hard to model, and so catastrophic at the extreme that pricing them seemed almost beside the point. 💡 Sarah Kapnick, J.P. Morgan's Global Head of Climate Advisory, found a way through that mental block. Her framework doesn't ask companies to plan for the apocalypse. It asks them to do something far more familiar: run the numbers. ⛈️ Her example is straightforward. A flood with a 0.2% annual probability produces $30 in present-value damages over a 30-year horizon. Manageable. Ignorable, even. But if a climate tipping point hits midway through that window, the same analysis produces over $1,600 in present-value damages. 💰 Same asset. Same timeframe. Fifty times the exposure. Suddenly the distant, theoretical risk has a number attached to it, and that number belongs on a balance sheet. What changed here isn't the science. What changed is that one of the world's most influential financial institutions decided these risks deserve a framework, not a footnote. And once that door opens, the dynamic shifts quickly. Repricing doesn't require a tipping point to actually occur. It requires enough institutions to treat the risk as decision-relevant. Once that happens, pricing adjustments arrive suddenly, unevenly, and across asset classes. A financial tipping point, triggered by the anticipation of a physical one. 📅 Is tipping point risk already on your boardroom agenda, or does it still feel too distant to act on? Link to article in first comment. #climate #tippingpoints #globalwarming #climaterisk