As climate change accelerates and an increasing number of global impacts are emerging, global companies are being encouraged, either by best-practise recommendations or, in some cases, legislative requirements, to disclose their climate-related financial risks within annual reports. The main impetus for this step change has been the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (The TCFD).
The TCFD recommend eleven disclosures that should be made by all organisations exposed to climate-related impacts: these can be separated into physical climate risks (the direct risks an organisation has, or will likely have, due to changing weather patterns, shifts in climate regimes etc) and transition risks (e.g. the threat to an organsiation;s business viability / continuity due to greening thier operations and supply change). In fact, both elements can be further partitioned into risks and opportunities – for example adaptitng and planning to climate risk may well invoke further ‘wins’ in other aspects, not least secuting an organisation as a stable prospect for lending and investment.
More scenario analyses are needed.
The annual TCFD status report has shown encouraging uptake of global organisations aligning themselves with TCFD expectiations. However, organisations in all global regions are scoring poorly in terms of test-casing their Strategy and Risk Management using scenario-based data. This is important, since stakeholders, investors and lenders want to know how resilient an organisation is to differing levels of future climate change.
In response to this ESD is excited to launch a dedicated work-stream ‘THEMIS’ which will serve partner organisations in accessing and applying the very latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate scenario data. These data are the world-leading suite of climate model output that are used to form international climate treaty objectives (e.g. Kyoto, 1995; Paris 2015) – as well as underpinning international academic research into global climate impacts.
THEMIS will do the technical work for you
The UN IPCC scenarios can be technically difficult to navigate and accessing and applying the data to inform business impacts require programming and data handling skills. ESD and their staff have been using UN IPCC data for 15+ years (IPCC CMIP3, CMIP5 and now CMIP6) both for university-affiliated research and private and public sector companies commissions to inform project and business decisions needing future climate intelligence.
We are excited to make our computer programming and climate analysis skills available via THEMIS to allow TCFD-returning companies access official UN climate scenarios, and produce specific scenario-based content to inform their work and meet or surpasses TCFD standards.
Low, medium, high emissions scenarios.
A good evaluation of organisational risk management efficacy under differing climate scenarios demonstrates security to your stakeholders and investors. We can assist with all elements of TCFD reporting (Governance, Strategy, Risk Management and Metrics), but THEMIS excels in producing material related to physical climate risks (and opportunities). We have the programming and analytical specialism to work with all sizes of companies joining the TCFD reporting community. We can advise (and perform) bespoke analyses of future scenarios, or provide appraisals of existing research, to produce tailored information for your reporting.
We would love to hear from you and learn about your specific TCFD work. Our specialism and skills are here to help and we would love to engage with organisations of all sizes, anywhere on the globe.
[e] contact us at info@earthsystemdata.com with subject ‘TCFD’
THEMIS HOMEPAGE
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