Climate Bond Standard released, open for business; Goal to Assure Integrity of Green Claims for Investors, Governments

The Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC) today welcomed the passage of the Clean Energy Future bills through the Senate and looks forward to greater regulatory certainty and investment opportunity.

Investors need a long term, transparent and certain regulatory framework to address carbon emission risks in their investment portfolios and the Clean Energy Future package provides it.

Chief Executives of IGCC member organisations made the following comments about passage of the Clean Energy Future package.

“The Clean Energy Future package provides a market based framework to price emissions and we are delighted that it has finally passed the Parliament after so many years,” said Frank Pegan, CEO, Catholic Super and Chair of the IGCC.

Melbourne, Australia, 7 November 2011. Only 4% of ASX200 and NZX50 responding companies reported that carbon pricing was a high impact risk to their business, while overall 33% of responding companies rated the risk as medium or above according to the latest report from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) written by Deloitte Australia.

The CDP Australia & NZ Report 2011 is the sixth annual assessment of climate change disclosures made by ASX200 and NZX50 companies to investors through the CDP. 50% (up from 47% last year) of companies on the ASX200 responded to the CDP questionnaire asking them to measure and disclose what climate change means for their business, while 42% (down from 46% in 2010) responded from the NZX50.