Library | ESG issues
Fossil Fuel Industry
The fossil fuel industry includes coal, crude oil, and natural gas, which are carbon-intensive energy sources formed from ancient organic material. Their extraction and use are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, environmental destruction, and climate change. In the finance industry, fossil fuels present both risks and opportunities, as investors assess regulatory challenges, transition risks, stranded asset potential, and shifting market demand while also exploring opportunities in cleaner energy alternatives and low-carbon transition strategies.
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Canadian pension climate report card series
The Canadian Pension Climate Report Card is an annual benchmark series assessing how major Canadian pension funds manage climate-related risks and align investment and stewardship practices with climate science. It applies a consistent, comparative framework using publicly disclosed information to evaluate governance, targets, engagement and integration over time.
Banking on climate chaos series
The Banking on Climate Chaos is a multi-year research series assessing how major global banks finance fossil fuel activities. It provides a consistent framework to review lending and underwriting linked to fossil fuels and expansion, supporting year-on-year comparison and broader analysis of banking practices.
Climate fiduciaries: part II – the duty of even-handedness
This article explores the fiduciary duty of even-handedness and its implications for climate-aware pension fund investing, focusing on emerging legal challenges in Australia and Canada. It argues that unmanaged climate risk may breach trustees’ obligations to act equitably across generations, particularly where younger members bear disproportionate long-term harm.
Carbon Majors
Carbon Majors is a public database that quantifies historical and current greenhouse gas emissions attributable to major fossil fuel producers. It provides company-level data, methodologies, and analysis to support climate risk assessment, policy research, and accountability across financial, regulatory, and academic contexts.
Global Energy Monitor
Global Energy Monitor is an open-access research database that compiles and analyses global energy infrastructure data, including fossil fuel and renewable projects, via interactive tools, maps and downloadable datasets to support informed analysis of energy trends and ownership structures.
Global Energy Monitor
Global Energy Monitor (GEM) is a non-profit research organisation that develops and publishes open-access data, interactive tools, and analysis on global energy infrastructure, including fossil fuels and renewable projects. GEM’s datasets and reports inform energy transition, climate policy and public understanding worldwide.
Paris Agreement Capital Transition Assessment
PACTA for Banks is a free, open-source climate scenario analysis toolkit that enables banks to assess how well their corporate lending portfolios align with climate scenarios, using sector and asset-level data to inform lending strategy and climate target-setting.
Climate fiduciaries: part I – the climate prisoner’s dilemma
This article explores how climate change is reshaping fiduciary duty for pension funds, through court cases, legal analysis, and the concept of systemic risk. It introduces the “climate prisoner’s dilemma,” arguing that climate-aware investment may be shifting from discretionary to obligatory for long-term fiduciaries.
Carbon Bombs
CarbonBombs.org is an open-source global database mapping large fossil fuel extraction projects (“carbon bombs”), new oil, gas and coal developments and LNG terminals, with estimated future CO₂ emissions and links to companies and banks involved. Data is consolidated from multiple research sources and regularly updated.
China coal action plan offers roadmap for coal phase-out
The report analyses China’s first quantitative coal power decarbonisation plan, outlining emissions-reduction targets to 2027 via co-firing and carbon capture. It finds retrofitted coal increasingly uncompetitive versus renewables with storage, raising risks for new coal investments and strengthening the case for no-new-coal commitments.
The (mis)use of scenarios in fossil fuel and industry climate disclosures
The report analyses climate disclosures by investor-owned carbon majors, finding widespread misuse of climate scenarios to claim Paris alignment. Common issues include outdated scenarios, opaque assumptions and misleading aggregation, which obscure transition risks and may misinform investor decision-making.
Banking on business as usual: The energy finance imbalance
The report assesses energy financing by 65 major banks (2021–2024), finding fossil fuel finance more than double sustainable power supply. The energy supply financing ratio stagnates around 0.42:1, far below net-zero benchmarks, with regional disparities and weak translation of climate commitments into financing shifts.
Green industrial policy’s unfinished business: A publicly managed fossil fuel wind-down
The report argues that green industrial policy must actively manage a fossil fuel wind-down. It contends that renewables expansion alone is insufficient, calling for public planning, regulation, and ownership to ensure equitable decarbonisation and prevent fossil fuel liabilities shifting to the public.
Green finance was supposed to contribute solutions to climate change. So far, it’s fallen well short
The article argues that while climate disclosure and green finance initiatives have expanded since Mark Carney’s “tragedy of the horizon” speech, they have failed to shift capital at the scale required to address climate and nature risks. It contends that deeper structural reforms to financial valuation, incentives and capital allocation are needed to move beyond managing symptoms toward financing real-world solutions.
Maximising Australia’s green growth: Leveraging trade and aid policy to drive Australia’s green exports agenda
The report assesses risks to Australia’s fossil fuel exports and outlines how aligned trade, aid and climate finance policies can build demand for green exports. It proposes sustainable growth partnerships in the Indo-Pacific to secure markets, attract investment and support regional decarbonisation.
Escalation: The destructive force of Australia's fossil fuel exports on our climate
The report finds Australia’s fossil fuel exports significantly escalate global warming and domestic climate risks. It highlights missing policy restrictions, growing harms to people and systems, and urges an orderly, cooperative and just phase-out with regulatory reforms and international engagement.
