Call for feedback and workshop invitations on EU Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance from the Technical Expert Group
The EU Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance, (TEG) is maintaining the brisk pace set by its HLEG predecessor opening a pre-Christmas round of public discussion, including invitations to workshops to prepare for the second round on the development of an EU Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance.
The announcement stems from the EU Sustainable Finance Action Plan that the Commission published in March 2018 and follows up on the Commission's legislative proposal on an EU Taxonomy presented in May 2018.
A quick look at the Outreach Plans gives a firm indication that 2019 will see the TEG momentum maintained.
The Taxonomy group has been working on definitions for sustainable economic activities that deliver mitigation and adaptation to climate change with other environmental and social objectives to be added in a second phase of work.
Our CEO Sean Kidney has been a representative in both the HLEG and TEG projects. We’re pleased that some of the work of Climate Bonds in creating a climate-aligned Taxonomy and the efforts of our technical and industry expert groups developing our science based Standard has informed the TEG discussions and provided working practice and market based examples for consideration.
You can provide written feedback and register for the workshops here.
UNEP FI and PRI will host a Webinar on Monday 17 December at 15:30 CET to provide background and guidance on the feedback process to those interested in contributing.
Written feedback
The TEG is looking for written comments on two points:
1. Usability of the Taxonomy: feedback should focus on the fitness for purpose of the taxonomy format for practical implementation. Comments from all potential taxonomy users would be welcome.
2. 1st round mitigation activities: technical criteria for defining substantial contribution to climate change mitigation and for screening these activities for potential significant harm to the other environmental objectives have been proposed for certain sectors based on existing, market-based definitions. These include:
· Forestry
· Energy Production
· Manufacturing
· Transport
· Buildings
The deadline for feedback is 22 February 2019.
Only feedback provided through the dedicated online surveys will be taken into account.
Invitation to workshops
The TEG has identified three key areas where additional expertise is needed:
1. 2nd round climate change mitigation activities. These include:
· Agricultural activities
· Mining and quarrying
· Manufacturing of cement, ferrous and non-ferrous metals (including steel and aluminum) and chemicals
· Combined heat and power, electricity distribution and storage
· Water and waste management
· Water and air transport
· Information and communication
Further work on the 1st round mitigation criteria is also required and experts can apply for those sectors as well.
2. Development of new criteria for activities expected to make a substantial contribution to climate adaptation – an approach has been developed by the TEG on how to address adaptation but further expertise is required to develop technical screening criteria.
3. The development of new criteria to assess “do no significant harm” across the other environmental objectives – these are sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources, transition to a circular economy, waste prevention and recycling, pollution prevention control, and protection of healthy ecosystems.
Experts need to register their interest to attend the workshops by January 4th 2019 and will be selected based on their experience and notified about the expectations of the work.
The workshops will be hosted throughout the first part of 2019 to gather this expertise and gather input for the criteria development.
The last word
The European Commission has called for a carbon neutral Europe by 2050 amongst a host of other climate and green finance actions being carried out at national and corporate level.
There’s no shortage of opportunity for the financial sector, banks, corporates and institutional investors to put their shoulders to wheel in this next stage of the TEG process.
But that shouldn’t prevent getting on with the job of issuing green bonds, developing green loans programs and supporting green underwriting.
Société du Grand Paris (SGP) aren’t waiting. They’re are issuing a series of Programmatic Certified green bonds for the largest transport project in in Europe, set to take a decade to complete.
While the TEG sorts out structural aspects of sustainable investment, the finance sector still has its own work to do to close the climate finance gap.
‘Till next time,
Climate Bonds
