Denmark’s pensions and insurance lobby announced today it has adopted a set of common climate reporting rules for the sector, as part of the ongoing work in the Nordic country to meet its 2030 emissions reduction goal.
The new code – based on the comply-or-explain principle – covers CO2 emissions from investment assets, damage prevention, active ownership and the use of paper in everyday life, according to the announcement from Insurance & Pension Denmark (IPD).
It has been devised as part of Denmark’s system of climate partnerships for each of the various sectors in its economy, which were put in place in 2019 to achieve the national goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by 2030 in relation to 1990 levels.
Torben Möger Pedersen, chief executive officer of PensionDanmark and leader of the financial sector climate partnership, said in today’s announcement: “It is absolutely crucial for achieving our climate ambitions that we have completely clear – and common – measurement points for the effort.
“Since we submitted our recommendations to the government, our industry has worked purposefully to prepare an industry recommendation that can help create transparency about our goals for customers’ climate footprint, our involvement with customers and projects, sustainability in our business models and the reduction of our own emissions,” he said.
Defining certain obligations for the financial sector as part of its report and recommendations submitted to government in March 2020, the partnership said emissions reductions within the sector would be supported by a company-specific annual, systematic review and reporting of firms’ own CO2 emissions – and target-setting related to this.
“You get what you measure – this certainly also applies to our efforts for the climate,” Möger Pedersen said today.
“That is why it is so important and positive that we have now created a consensus on the choice of measurement methods and quality assurance for our work in the industry for the green transition,” he said.
Kent Damsgaard, IPD’s CEO, described having to calculate total CO2 emissions from their overall investment portfolios – as well as report on the sustainability of real estate investments, for example – as a big task for the group’s members.
“But we are concerned with achieving our goal of reducing CO2 emissions, and that is why it has been so important to have a common standard in place,” he said.
At the beginning of March 2020, PensionDanmark said it had become the first pension provider in Denmark to include figures on its own environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in its annual independent auditor’s report.
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