Felix Goltz, PhD, Research Director, Scientific Beta | Victor Liu, CFA, ESG Analyst, Scientific Beta | Brendan Maton, IPE
– How consistent are climate strategies with impact objectives? –
Climate investing strategies seek to reward virtuous companies with increasing capital and provide incentives for management to reduce the climate impact of corporate activities. We analyse whether typical strategies that tilt to stocks with good climate scores or optimise portfolio climate scores are consistent with this impact objective.
We analyse common climate strategies and analyse the holdings of such strategies. How strategies decide on weights at the individual stock level, and how these weights change over time is crucial for driving impact on company management to act for the climate. Therefore, we go beyond analysing portfolio level weighted-average scores that are targeted by such strategies and instead ask how well the strategies incentivise companies to reduce the climate damage they create.
Topics covered include:
– A taxonomy of climate investing strategies
– Identifying the key drivers of capital supply from climate investing to green and brown firms
– Assessing the consistency of signals for incentivizing firms to act on climate