Posts Tagged ‘Carbon Disclosure Project’

Possible Impact of Climate Change on Small Business Finances

Tuesday, July 14th, 2015
No Longer Sustainable

No Longer Sustainable

The impact of climate change considerations on investment decisions has been a subject of increasing coverage in the business news. Institutional investors as diverse as the Church of England and AXA (a global insurance company headquartered in Paris) have divested their portfolios of stock holdings in fossil fuel companies, citing concerns about rising greenhouse gases. At the same time, interest in investing in “green” or sustainable energy companies is growing. Investors who seek more information about the carbon emissions of major companies find the Carbon Disclosure Project to be very helpful.  CDP publishes information about the carbon emissions and offsets of major businesses to allow investors to assess the environmental impact of these companies. The insurance industry has been a leader in this movement, largely because of concerns that increase carbon emissions cause climate change and with it, increasingly frequent and severe weather-related disasters.

Now the focus is turning on the impact of climate change on households and small businesses. I was quoted in an article that U.S. News & World Report published today considering how climate change will affect property values, energy costs and food prices. We know from the work done by the United Nations Development Program and others that every dollar invested in risk mitigation programs reduces losses from weather-related hazards by nineteen dollars. I expect that in the near future we will learn more about the economics of climate change adaptation measures for our longer-term security,