As pressure mounts from their own constituents to decarbonize, institutional investors are looking for the companies they invest in to shift from net-zero pronouncements to concrete net-zero action plans.

A company’s announcement of their net-zero commitment is the result of much analysis and a myriad of decisions. But the key is recognizing that it represents the start of the process, not its conclusion — and that the process involves every employee. We speak with Diana Tidd, MSCI’s former Head of Index and Chief Responsibility Officer, Veronique Menou, Head of Corporate Responsibility and Joseph Gagliardi, Head of Corporate Services, about everything that goes into a net-zero effort.

The pressure on institutional investors to act on climate change and demonstrate its influence on their decision-making and portfolio construction continues to grow. Increasingly, the focus is on the alignment of client investment strategies with the decarbonization 

Institutional investors are under pressure to align their strategies with a maximum global temperature increase of 1.5oC as targeted by the Paris Agreement. We examine how they can approach this while respecting other investment constraints.

HOW CAN UNIVERSAL OWNERS INTEGRATE ESG PRINCIPLES WHILE MAINTAINING A BROAD AND DIVERSIFIED INVESTMENT UNIVERSE? Institutional investors are increasingly looking for ways to integrate ESG considerations into their investment decisions. By doing so, they may aim to mitigate long-term risks, generate higher risk-adjusted performance and/or align investments with broader societal objectives. As ESG investment guidelines become more commonplace among asset owners, and as many continue to build...

Institutional investors are increasingly looking for ways to steer capital toward companies and projects that provide solutions to major social and environmental challenges, but achieving impact at scale can be a challenging proposition. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a useful foundation for scalable impact, representing a broad consensus of global stakeholders around 17 ambitious development goals. The new Sustainable Impact framework and accompanying data...

Winner of the 2015 IRRC Institute Investor Research Award for best practitioner paper. Approaches based on divesting certain sectors effectively can help asset owners communicate their concerns about the risks of climate change to stakeholders. However, they ignore short-term benchmark risk. Further, a focus on divesting reserves disregards fixed assets that are at risk of losing value because they depend on burning fossil fuel reserves. This paper provides a framework for evaluating ways to...