Library | ESG issues
Energy Solutions & Decarbonisation
Energy solutions and decarbonisation refer to strategies and technologies that reduce carbon emissions while ensuring reliable and sustainable energy supply. This includes renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydropower, energy efficiency measures, electrification, carbon capture, and clean energy innovations. Decarbonisation is essential for mitigating climate change, enhancing energy security, and transitioning industries toward low-carbon operations.
Refine
304 results
REFINE
SHOW: 16
The transition finance playbook: A practical guide for financial institutions
A practical guide outlining how financial institutions can scale transition finance through governance, eligibility criteria, portfolio segmentation, due-diligence enhancements and engagement. It highlights Canadian market context, barriers, and actionable “top tips” to support credible decarbonisation, stewardship and collaboration across the financial system.
Institute for Sustainable Finance (ISF)
Institute for Sustainable Finance (ISF) at Smith School of Business, Queen’s University, is Canada’s first multi-disciplinary hub aligning finance with environmental sustainability. It conducts research, publishes policy guidance, and runs education and collaboration programmes to help policymakers, investors, and firms integrate climate risk, nature, and ESG considerations into capital allocation and regulation.
Future fit shipping: Decarbonising the Aotearoa New Zealand maritime industry
Aotearoa New Zealand’s maritime sector faces rising decarbonisation pressures. The report outlines emissions-reduction pathways, alternative fuel options, green corridor opportunities, and economic risks of inaction. It recommends coordinated planning, trans-Tasman collaboration, and enabling regulation to maintain trade competitiveness and support a lower-emissions shipping system.
Sustainable Finance Roundup November 2025: Transition Turning Points and Rising Accountability
This month’s sustainable-finance roundup highlights faster transition momentum, rising physical risks and a tightening focus on accountability. COP30 reinforced expectations for stronger 2035 targets, while national actions underscored diverging paths toward decarbonisation. Markets continued shifting toward clean energy and resilience, and new science made climate harms more visible. With regulatory scrutiny and litigation increasing, transition credibility and real-economy resilience are becoming core drivers of financial risk and investment decisions.
The investor climate policy engagement paradox
The article explores the paradox in which institutional investors focus heavily on climate-risk disclosure, an area of comfort and perceived legitimacy, while underinvesting in real-economy climate policy that could meaningfully reduce systemic risk. It argues that meaningful climate action requires shifting from technocratic “managing tons” approaches toward politically challenging asset revaluation and more robust policy engagement.
Empirically grounded technology forecasts and the energy transition
This report uses empirically validated probabilistic forecasting to assess future energy technology costs. It finds that rapid deployment of solar, wind, batteries, and electrolyser technologies is likely to lower overall system costs and deliver substantial net savings compared with continued reliance on fossil fuels.
Making our way: Adaptive capacity and climate transition in Australia’s regional economies
Australia’s fossil-fuel-exposed regions are assessed across seven dimensions of adaptive capacity, showing common weaknesses in economic diversity, social capital and service access. The report outlines region-specific strengths and proposes tailored, place-based transition planning to support diversification and community resilience through the net zero shift.
Increasing climate ambition, decreasing emissions: The third progress report of the net-zero asset owner alliance
The report outlines the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance’s progress in reducing financed emissions, strengthening target-setting, and expanding climate-solution investments. It highlights updated methodologies, increased engagement with companies and policymakers, and rising member participation, underscoring the need for credible transition pathways and supportive policy environments to advance alignment with 1.5°C goals.
On YouTube, a Shift from Denying Science to Dismissing Solutions
This article dives into an analysis of over 12,000 YouTube videos and finds that while outright climate-change denial is dropping, content undermining climate solutions and trust in scientists is rising sharply. It also highlights concerns over YouTube’s ad policies, which still allow monetisation alongside videos that downplay impacts or spread misleading claims about climate policy.
Net zero carbon buildings in cities: Interdependencies between policy and finance
This report analyses how cities can decarbonise buildings by mapping the interdependencies between policy and financial instruments and the barriers they address. It highlights priority actions for cooling, embodied carbon, adaptation and a just transition, outlining pathways that help cities sequence measures to accelerate net zero building outcomes.
Closing the Gap: The evolution of climate transition finance in China
China’s transition finance market is expanding to support the decarbonisation of high-emitting industries. The report outlines growth in green and sustainability-linked bonds, emerging transition frameworks, and ongoing debates on coal and gas inclusion, highlighting the need for clearer standards and broader financing tools to meet China’s 2060 climate goals.
Firm‐level climate change exposure
The report develops a machine-learning method to measure firm-level climate change exposure from earnings calls across 34 countries. It identifies opportunity, physical, and regulatory dimensions and shows that these exposures predict green hiring, green patenting, and are reflected in options and equity markets.
World energy investment series
This benchmark series by the International Energy Agency provides annual analysis of global energy investment trends across fuels, electricity, efficiency, and technology. It tracks capital flows, financing patterns, and policy influences, offering a consistent reference on how investments shape the energy system’s evolution and transition.
Environmental Change Institute (ECI), University of Oxford
Environmental Change Institute (ECI) at University of Oxford conducts interdisciplinary research on climate change, ecosystems, energy systems, food and water security, and sustainable governance. Established in 1991, ECI collaborates with governments, business and communities to inform policy and training in environmental leadership.
Greenwashing, net-zero, and the oil sands in Canada: The case of Pathways Alliance
This article analyses how Canada’s Pathways Alliance representing 95 % of oil sands output frames its net-zero commitments. Reviewing 183 public communications, it finds widespread indicators of greenwashing, including selective disclosure, unverifiable claims, and poor accountability. The study urges broader scrutiny of coordinated industry communication across digital and public relations platforms.
Sustainable Finance Roundup October 2025: Carbon Markets, Targets, and the Cost of Resilience
This month’s sustainability roundup traces a rapidly evolving landscape in climate finance and accountability, spotlighting the weaknesses exposed by Hurricane Melissa’s disaster-risk finance system alongside new policy frameworks now reshaping sustainable investment. It highlights how vulnerable nations continue to bear the costs of climate impacts, how regulatory reforms such as Australia’s 2035 emissions target and global disclosure regimes are embedding accountability, and how renewed scrutiny of carbon markets is driving the search for credible, incentive-based pathways to real decarbonisation.