Yang Xiaosong, CEO of China Southern Asset Management Co., Ltd. (“Southern Asset Management”), was asked to deliver the keynote speech at the first ESG Global Leaders Summit on August 26 in Beijing, sponsored by Sina Finance ESG Channel and CITIC Publishing Group. The Summit presented an opportunity to meet with global regulatory, business, investment and academic circles to discuss the future of ESG. The topic Yang chose for his address was The Road to Carbon Neutrality for Institutional Investors.
Faced with the increasingly severe challenges of the climate crisis, China made the solemn promise of “30.60 Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality” at the UN Climate Summit last year. As the world’s largest developing country, China has actively promoted “carbon peak and carbon neutrality”, which not only demonstrates the country’s broad mind and responsibility, but also points out the direction for China’s economic and social comprehensive green transformation and sustainable development.
“Carbon peak and carbon neutrality” will promote structural changes in the economy and society, including changes in energy structure, industrial structure, and consumption structure. In this process, on the one hand, professional investment institutions will give full play to the function of optimizing resource allocation and provide long-term funding sources for green and low-carbon high-quality enterprises; on the other hand, the carbon neutral industry chain breeds huge investment opportunities. Professional investment institutions can Through the layout of new opportunities for industrial upgrading and technological breakthroughs, it will create returns for investors and create value for society.
As a leading domestic institutional investor, Southern Asset Management attaches great importance to the research and practice of sustainable development finance. As early as 2018, it joined UNPRI (United Nations Responsible Investment Organization) and took the lead in establishing an ESG management structure, an ESG evaluation system and an ESG evaluation system. Investment system, implement active shareholder strategies, and explore the guiding role of investment on the real economy. “Carbon peaking and carbon neutrality” is an important part of ESG investment. Regarding how institutional investors can promote “carbon peaking and carbon neutrality”, we have the following thoughts and explorations:
One is to build a “carbon emissions” database with the help of financial technology.
Carbon emission data is an infrastructure for the financial industry to measure the climate change risks faced by enterprises, and it is also an essential part of asset pricing revaluation. Public funds need to conduct a more comprehensive and three-dimensional analysis of investment targets through big data collection, and fully integrate carbon emission databases with active research. However, the actual situation is that the ESG information disclosure data of domestic companies is incomplete. As of May 2021, there are only 1092 and 149 listed companies that actively disclose ESG data and carbon footprint data, accounting for 25% and 3.6% respectively (Data