 Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to this press conference from the 50th anniversary of the World Economic Forum here in Davos You've seen it. You heard it. You've read it Climate climate change fighting climate change is definitely one of the headline topics of this press conference Yesterday and today the headlines were dominated by two of the participants here in Davos clearly a greater Thunberg and Donald Trump but As it's in the name World Economic Forum It's also important to have a look what the private sector is doing in that space this press conference is dedicated to Exactly that topic. It's under the headline financial giants moving trillions to attain net zero carbon quite an ambition ambitious title even even for the World Economic Forum What happened last year is that some of the largest investors in the private sector joined forces to radically reduce the global carbon emissions by ensuring that their portfolios their investments Would be carbon neutral by 2050 We hope this press conference can mark a milestone in this Alliance in this initiative The 16 existing members are very happy to announce that the family is getting bigger here and but we also want to hear what have been the concrete steps that the that the Alliance took and And what's the way forward? What's the way forward? You heard yesterday from Greenpeace as well Business is not doing enough. You had from greater business is not doing enough You had from President Trump a slightly different approach She spoke about the profits of doom when it came to climate change So where in this colorful mix is the private sector where in this colorful mix are also other large investors I'm pleased to be joined by an expert panel to discuss this question update Both you members of the media here in the room and our audience on the live stream on on the progress on that front On my immediate left. I'm joined by Christiana Figueres. She's the conveyor of mission 2020 and for those of you Who might remember? She was also the executive secretary at the UN F triple C. So quite An illustrious commitment to to fighting climate change to her immediate left. We're joined by Gunther Tallinger who's the chair of the Alliance and Is the chief investment officer of Alliance? So to two different alliances one, of course My member company of the form and one exactly this net zero Alliance We're we're talking about here today to his immediate left We're joined by Tom Jory who's the director of investments at church commissioners for England So I'm not saying you're a suspect Tom, but you're definitely not one of the usual suspects to find here in that space Well, so we're very happy to have you and last but definitely not least we're joined by Guido Fuhrer Who is the group chief investment officer of Swiss re? Thank you very much for for joining us Christiana is without further ado Give us a quick summary of how the discussions have been going so far and Tell us a little bit about why you think the engagement from the private sector is so crucial to achieve the goals Thank you. Well, thank you very much and thank you for taking the time today I would just like to first of all congratulate Gunter for leading the charge here Alliance for leading the charge and say this is something that is also being highly supported by Unip fi Unip our finance initiative And we're very excited about the asset owner Alliance because if if there is a food chain in the financial sector then asset owners are at the top of the food chain and asset managers do need to take heed of the Protection that they get from asset from asset owners as well as companies if they're being Directly invested in by the asset owners. So either Through either route there are it's a very powerful signal when a Critical mass of asset owners around the world that are currently at four trillion but soon to grow stay tuned actually come together to To support each other in ensuring that their portfolios that they hold will not exceed 1.5 degrees and What has been a very? Interesting conversation today was the first ever conversation between the members of that alliance between the asset owners and Some of the companies that they hold And a conversation around what can be done in order to help these companies for them to get their companies to protect the 1.5 degree ceiling In recognition of the fact that the asset owners may be completely committed to this but if the companies don't move they cannot deliver on their commitment and And the companies equally They may or may not be currently committed, but they need the financial backing for the transition That is not always an easy transition So a very clear recognition that it needs to be an effort on both sides We were we were quite impressed that the conversation was one that there was appetite for obviously initiated by the Asset owners, but the corporations actually not just willing to speak But having a very clear appetite for this dialogue not one that was finished today far from it that dialogue will continue But at least started off on a very good note Three points that I think I would I would summarize from the conversation. There was a clear call for more rigor More rigor in the accounting more rigor in the reporting more rigor in the metrics And that is really important in order to for transparency and in order to be able to keep track of whether we're moving forward With the carbonization or not. There was also a clear call to yes. This is a very good start of a relatively small group of both companies and asset owners, but a clear call to expand the Bound the current boundary to other geographies both in terms of asset ownership as well as in terms of Companies in order to make this a whole global economy Movement forward and the third and I think the most important was a real commitment on both sides on Everyone to collaborate with each other There are some sectors that are easy to abate but in particular those sectors that are hard to abate There's no need to reinvent the wheel and an open a call for Open source scenarios and tools that everyone in the same sector can use in order to make Apples be apples and in order to accelerate The learning ground from which everyone is starting Thank you. Good to you're not just here as the chief investment officer of alliance But you're also chairing the steering board of the net zero asset owner alliance. So you're the right person to ask What are the plans going forward? So we heard it's still a relatively small group. So what's going to happen next, please? Yeah, you first of all, I should start out with the commitment that these 16 as in all owners made The commitment is indeed net zero 2050 Some people Misunderstand this a little bit and believe this means net zero 2050 nothing happens till close to 2050 Quite the contrary is the fact the the group of as donors is now working Especially on how can we measure the carbon footprint of these entire portfolios and as Christianity already said we are well Well above four trillion in terms of total assets So what's the carbon footprint of these more than four trillion and then we are working on what is a very first step into the direction of net zero 2050 and you should expect that during the course of this year, obviously we have coped 26 Coming up. So it's very clear that line during the course of this year. We are coming with this Target of a very first step what the reduction then means and in that sense It starts to become very very concrete and as Christiana said the discussion with corporates that we Started now really in a larger group Individual discussions with corporates. We always had in a certain form But now let's say really in a larger group is of the essence Here because the target that we will define during the course of the year will be Supported by measures that we are working on with those corporates. And that's why we believe we really talk about something that is quite Transformational for perhaps various areas not only the investing space Just because you asked what is going to happen. So this is one part the other part that certainly is going to happen and you are going to hear perhaps In a few seconds. We want to really expand the group of asset owners. We want to actually work very very hard to cover areas that are so far not that well represented. And I mentioned especially Asia and I mentioned this because we really really need to Invite as a donors from that region to join us. It would be very much welcomed and let's see what progress we can make there. So thank you for this. Thank you very much. So enough of the teasers already. Tom you're joining this panel for a very particular reason and for a wonderful reason. So please share share with us. Share with the audience. Why you're here. I'm happy to. So I'm Tom Joyce of the church commissioners and I'm delighted to be here today to announce our joining of the net zero asset owner alliance along with the other national investing bodies. Climate change is really the challenge of our of our age at the Church of England. We've been at the forefront of action investor action on climate change. We have a common policy in terms of engaging with companies with policy makers and progressively reallocation of capital away from the high carbon businesses of the past to the net zero economy of the future. So joining this alliance is very much a natural step for us. But it's also a vital step because we're asking companies to get to net zero by 2015. So it's important that we ask ourselves to do to do the same. And we believe that we're at an exciting tipping tipping point that Church of England has always been involved in responsible investment. But the pace of change we're seeing in the financial community is really remarkable. And we think by working together we really stand a chance of setting the world economy on a path to achieve the goals set out in the Paris agreement. One of our strengths has always been engaging with companies and we've been increasing our resources to do that. Church of England has been involved in some very important engagement successes on climate change with companies. For example from B.P. To ensure that its capital expenditure is consistent with the goals of the Paris agreement with Shell to harvest carbon footprint by 2050. With Glencore to cap its global coal production and then with U.S. Electric Electric Utility Duke Energy to be net zero by 2050. So these are positive developments but we need to do more. And we have a long track record that shows that actually incorporating responsible investment and ESG into your process. You can still achieve outstanding financial results as our track record attains to. So we are undoubted that the announcement we're making here will serve our beneficiaries in the future. And as a perpetual endowment a fund that's here not just for current generations but for all future generations. This is such a paramount importance and is why we're joining the Alliance today. Thank you very much. So things are happening. There is progress. But Gido 2050 is quite a couple of years away from us yet. And if you talk to a lot of the climate activists here in the building also definitely if you would talk to the protesters outside the building. We're saying this is not going fast enough. It needs to be much faster. More has to happen quicker. How do you space out these these actions over the over the years until 2050. It's a very fair question. Just think about when we started this journey. You need to first agree how you measure basically progress. That's why one of the working stream which we also call it together with alliances actually focus on that how we measure progress. How we measure the specific targets which we want to achieve. But it's also about reporting. One is measuring but I think we want to also engage not only amongst us but also with the portfolio company. How best should be reported about carbon and other relevant pieces. And ultimately also verification based on that we will define clear interim target. We will have at least every fifth year a target which one achieve and I just want to give you one example. Three three a global re-insurance company. We started to focus on climate many years ago. Three years ago we made a major decision to switch to so called ESG benchmark environment social governance benchmark. Since we switched we could reduce the carbon intensity of our portfolio in the equity piece by 52 percent on the copper bomb site which is another allocation of each insurance company at many other international investors we could reduce by 42 percent. So basically we have the carbon intensity or the carbon footprint by almost 50 percent. That's why it's relatively reasonable measure you can achieve a lot. And that's why I'm looking very much forward together with other asset owner to make it a joint journey and defined joint targets. Thank you very much. Before I open the floor to question answers and I think you mentioned already you want to engage more Asian companies but looking at the 16 or now 17 members. One can't help but notice that it's still very strongly European based. When you speaking to your peers here from the investors community in Davos. Do you feel that message is being heard everywhere with the urgency. It needs to be heard. Please. Well I do. I do believe indeed the message is very much heard. There are as you rightly say indeed. Now let's say with the colleagues around Tom. We really are the asset owners coming in very prominent ones. The asset owners that are really leading in the area of sustainable investing. But by now we can also say that in terms of Europe really almost the entire European insurance industry is very strongly represented because what we also can announce here today is that in addition to all the names that you can find already on the web page also generally insurance is going to join us and they are very happy with us announcing this here in this conference. So in terms of Europe you are fully right. We develop a very very good position. We also believe we can move here already quite something. But yes we have this discussion with other asset owners and especially about their context. And that is something that we need to be very honest about the context in terms of policymaking. But also let's say the communication from the various political sides is something that we do a certain degree really rely a little bit on how we can expand. And we really hope for the other jurisdictions to be more open in terms of promoting their asset owners to join us. That's almost a request that would certainly alleviate the decision making for these asset owners especially we believe in some Asian countries. And there as you know they are really very very relevant asset owners whom we really would like us to join. Yeah. Make it a request not not just almost a request. So if you're watching and representing one of these one of these organizations get get to work. We have questions from the floor. We have a microphone coming especially for the sake of our online audience. If you could set your name and organization please. Thank you. Great. Catherine Cunningham. I'm with Thrive Natural Intelligence Media and Eurovision News and Events. And my question is if it was seems relatively easy once you do the metrics and you really look at the the gains in reducing a carbon footprint. You said you've reached the the 52 and 40 percent mark and having carbon reductions with the number of your companies that you work with. Was that just the low hanging fruit. And now we're sort of looking at the next 50 percent of offset if we're looking to get carbon neutrality maybe in a carbon negative future. Will that that transition for the next 50 percent. Will that be more difficult. Will it require true transformation of companies. Will that transformation require capital investment. I was at a panel yesterday with Mark Carney along to the Bank of London and he suggested that the real narrative now and the real question is you know what's your plan for the transition. This is really the key question. So maybe you could thank you. I bet on that. I think it's a very good question. No doubt that the first the first 50 percent is is doable within the current framework. We will only achieve net zero by 2050. If you have portfolios portfolio companies which you can invest which have done the transition. That's why I strongly believe it needs long term investors like you represent. Because ultimately if I believe in the United Nations IPCC figure they believe we need to invest 2.4 trillion a year the next 15 years to make that. Now pension funds but also insurance companies someone else fund we together manage over 80 trillion. Now 2.4 is a big amount no doubt but not completely impossible to achieve. If we start to channel our money towards the right direction if you have the right framework that's achievable. That's why we rely that companies shift. That's why we engage out of this as a donor alliance. We not only invest but those we engage with the sectors and with the company to make this transition possible. But as I've mentioned before it needs not only private sector needs also public sector. We need to have a cooperation because a cooperation basically allows to create standards and standard goes in reporting accounting and other other things which are important. Only then we believe we can we can achieve it. The reason why is we rejoin this asset owner alliances. I think it's yes this asset owner as Cristiana has mentioned we are very important part of the food chain. But ultimately we are credible because we committed to specific figure. That's why I feel this is an area which you want to engage in order to jointly take the challenge which you have. Thank you. Thank you Cristiana. How optimistic are you that the second half of the work gets done. Yeah. And I'd love to compliment that because I think it's important to understand that when you go to a company as this asset owner alliance is doing and asking them to decarbonize because otherwise the portfolios can't be decarbonized. You have to understand how company goes at that. First they go to the carbon that is fully under their control. That means the carbon of their operations and they go for first efficiency and they move to renewable energy and they look at you know everything that is under their control. Then of course they will look at scope to which is how does how is that actually beyond their own operations. But then the most important part of almost every single sector is scope three which is the suppliers. And that is not fully under their control. So you know just yesterday I spoke to one of the leaders here of the fashion industry second most polluting industry in the world right after fossil fuel and at least for this company or in general 90 percent of the emissions of the fashion industry are in the suppliers and for this particular company 95. So now you can really understand the complexity of this right because it's not just what you can do within your own manufacturing plants within your own transport within your own you know the whole operations that you fully control. Now you're asking you're going to have a much more complex conversation with your suppliers to say I have a commitment to 1.5 or to climate neutrality by X date and therefore you need to do it as well. And so we shouldn't fall into the simplistic thinking that once a company or in fact an asset owner assumes a certain target and by a certain date that they have that fully under their control. What they're doing is they're raising the flag. They're setting a target and then they need to actually pull the whole cavalry in to help deliver on that. That is the good news. It makes it more complex. But the good news is that there are ripple effects that go way beyond the asset owner or the particular company way much you know much more into the fabric of the economy. So it's both the difficulty as well as the advantage. Thank you. We have another question please. My name is Hannes Koch. I'm with target site and touch Berlin among others. Mr. Telling I would like to know whether you could give some more details concrete figures maybe on how fast you would be able to shift amounts of money. Because yesterday Alliance CEO Oliver Beta said that it shouldn't go too fast and that he can't put too much pressure on his own company in terms of speed shifting amounts of money. Yeah. I would say it's quite clear that one expects that there must be money shifted. The money shifting is in essence divesting in some area and investing in some other area. Now this is clearly a step that an investor should consider. But for us this is a form of an ultimate step. The divesting especially simply because we believe we actually can make achieve a much much bigger impact by working with the companies we are invested in or we finance or the assets we are invested in. If we work with those assets we actually have a good good chance to do indeed value creation and that's actually what an investor is really looking for an asset that overall evolves. And therefore the divesting is something that is really a little bit of difficult element. Now I do not want to kind of not answer the question because there's always the kind of the idea how fast can we act in terms of fast acting. So I ask to please let us define the target. As I said let's say during the course of the year how our portfolio the carbon footprint is going to develop in the first step that will quite clearly give a good understanding of what the speed is. It's not necessary that behind that we really have then shifted money. But we have actually a very clear plan how to work with companies. And yes it is the case in some forms there might be also a little bit of shifting in there. But as I said it's more the ultimate step. The much more important thing is to engage with companies and let them together with us develop their sustainability agenda. Thank you very much. Are there any other questions from the floor. If not Tom let me ask you. Christian mentioned the first step is always working on your own operations. Right. Can you talk a little bit about some concrete things that that you have done as the Church of England because I'd imagine your operations look quite different from from your other colleagues here on the panel. Yes. Well in terms of things we have done from a sort of positive environment mental aspect. You know we have a reasonable allocation to venture capital. I mean one of the solutions to climate change will be technological. And so you know having a meaningful allocation to start up venture capital we hope in time will help deliver the technologies that we will need to make this transition. We also you know have roughly about four percent of the portfolio in sustainable forestry. Now that's as we heard at our discussion earlier this morning that that is obviously great. Obviously having a sustainable forestry portfolio is good from a sort of carbon capture perspective. But ultimately that you know when the trees are fully grown they'll only be carbon neutral. But that's still an important step. We also invest in what we would call win win investments. So waste to energy for example we have a fairly meaningful allocation to that in the U.S. So we are very much looking for renewable investment opportunities on our land that we own in the U.K. and globally as well as is going to set engaging you know upping our resources to engage with companies because I do to sort of answer across the two questions that were asked earlier. Yes capital has to shift into into renewable technology and new opportunities. But the climate crisis will not be solved unless the transition happens. You know divestment is not the answer to the climate problem that won't that won't sadly solve. While ultimately as asset owners we always retain that right. If companies just refuse to listen to our engagement ultimately you know it will be that we'll have to invest but it won't solve the climate crisis. We have to engage so dedicating more resources to that internally upping our game as it were on the engagement front to really have some more wins like the ones I talked about in my opening remarks is what we're doing. Thank you very much. So it is clear it's a very complex challenge but there's reason to be to be optimistic. The the alliance is growing mindful of the time and the full schedule of everyone here on the panel. Let me thank you. Thank you for being here on the panel for giving us this update. And thank you for watching and being here in the room. Thank you very much.