AustralianSuper and British Columbia Investment Management have joined the Sustainable Development Investments Asset Owner Platform announced by Dutch pension investors APG and PGGM last year.
The vehicle will offer insight into how investable companies contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The commercial launch of the project – originally foreseen for the first quarter of this year – will take place at a virtual event in September, as of when interested investors can subscribe to the standard and data provided through distribution partner Qontigo.
The four pension investors are looking for “a maximum of three” additional asset owners to join the platform, Claudia Kruse, managing director global responsible investment at APG, told IPE.
A larger number would hamper effective decision-making, she said, adding that conversations with other pension investors to join the platform are ongoing.
Though the initiative will thus remain restricted to a maximum of seven asset owners, Kruse expressed hope the SDI platform, the first of its kind in the world, would reach “a critical mass of investors who together define the meaning of investing in the SDGs”.
To reach this goal of broad adoption, the four investors have decided to now share the SDI data generated by the platform publicly.
Since APG and PGGM first published an SDG taxonomy in 2017, the pair have had “many queries from fellow investors who have asked us whether they could use our taxonomy to classify their own investments”, said Kruse.
These other investors can now also use the underlying data and SDI classifications for their own investments, she added. These data will be available to the broader market in September.
The platform has hired data science company Entis to develop a model which feeds the participating asset owners’ policy and current investments into the assessment process.
“Entis collects relevant data on what products and services of companies can be attributed to which SDG,” Kruse explained. “The model focuses on the impact the products produced by a company have on the SDGs.” It doesn’t take into account environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria or metrics such as a company’s carbon footprint.
Kruse gave Dutch engineering company Arcadis, in which APG has a €163m stake, as an example: “According to our data, the infrastructure projects undertaken by Arcadis have an impact on SDG 6 – clean water and sanitation; SDG 9 – industry, innovation and infrastructure; SDG 11 – sustainable cities and communities; SDG 13 – climate action and SDG 15 – life on land.”
The SDI classification contains more granular data too, she said, for example on the relative importance of each SDG versus total revenues, and this will be available to subscribers.
The SDG taxonomy is different from the green taxonomy currently being developed by the EU, Kruse stressed. “The EU taxonomy focuses on climate change and environmental protection. That’s a very different starting point, but the EU taxonomy is still of use to us as a reference to inform our efforts.”
Looking for IPE’s latest magazine? Read the digital edition here.
