Green Equities 2019

25 November 2019

Hilton London Tower Bridge • 5 More London Place, Tooley Street, London, SE1 2BY

Overview Agenda Speakers Sponsors Venue Gallery

Agenda

08:00

Registration and morning coffee

08:45

Welcome remarks

Peter Cripps, Editor, Environmental Finance
Rhian-Mari Thomas, Chief Executive Officer, Green Finance Institute

09:00

KEYNOTE PANEL: The policy landscape for green finance

  • Reactions to the EU Commission's Sustainable Finance Action Plan
  • Will the taxonomy help combat greenwashing? Are the definitions adequate?
  • Brown definitions and the political fractures: what does it spell for the future of incorporating a brown taxonomy into legislation?
  • How is the Commission integrating TCFD and other frameworks? How will this benefit investment decisions?
  • Will the Sustainable Action Plan set the base for policy action in the real economy?
  • How can we attract investment into thematic areas?

 Moderator: 
Tonia Plakhotniuk, Sustainable Finance Lead, Policy, AFME

Panellists:
Laurent Clerc, Director of Studies and Risks' Analysis, ACPR
Nathan Fabian, Chief Responsible Investment Officer, UN PRI
Kirsty Hamilton, Associate Fellow, Low Carbon Finance, Chatham House
Ian Simm, Founder and Chief Executive, Impax Asset Management

 

09:50

PANEL: Going beyond renewables – alternative sectors to invest in now and for the future

  • The sustainable revolution: what are the most interesting sectors of development?
    • Investor opportunities in agriculture and land use
    • Industrial processes and transport
    • The circular economy and energy efficiency
    • Cleantech and additional innovations of the future
    • Social impact investing
  • What are the trends in fundraising and deployment for innovative projects?

 Moderator: Patrick Sheehan, Founder and Partner, ETF Partners

Panelists
Javier Echave, Chief Financial Officer, Heathrow Airport
Nathan Elstub, Chief Investment Officer, Nesta
Julie Hill, Chair, WRAPPavel Teremetsky, Associate Senior Director, Green Investments, EBRD

 

10:40

COFFEE

 LISTED EQUITIES STREAM PRIVATE EQUITY STREAM

 11:10

PANEL: Unpicking the differences in investment strategies and use of data

  • How are asset managers incorporating ESG into their investment strategies? 
  • How can better data collection fill gaps in knowledge?
  • What are the innovative ways that climate and ESG data is being used by financial markets?
  • Are green equities suitable for active management only?
  • Can ESG be part of factor investing?

Panellists:

Nico Fettes, Head of Climetrics, CDP
Lydia Fearn, Head of DC and Financial Well-being, Redington
Rory Sullivan, Co-founder and Director, Chronos Sustainability

 

 11:10

PANEL: Using ESG to identify risks and opportunities

  • To what extent are ESG and SDGs criteria beneficial to identifying opportunities for value creation?
  • How is the ESG lens being used by private equity to identify risks?
  • How could ESG criteria hinder decisions?
  • How will the EU Action Plan help PE and VC investors?
  • How do investors navigate problematic supply chains for some of the materials supplying green and renewable technologies?


Moderator: Toby Belsom, Director, Investment Practices, UN PRI

Panellists:
Helena Fagraeus Lundström, Head of Via Summa, Summa Equity
Maggie Loo, Partner, Bridges Fund Management
Shami Nissan, Head of Responsible Investment, Actis
 

 

 11:40

PANEL: Mobilising power – fund creation and shareholder engagement

  • What can be done to mobilise the power of pension funds to invest in green equities?
  • What is next step for shareholder resolutions? Are they winning enough support?
  • Climate Action 100+ review: what has been achieved and what needs to happen next?
  • Are such initiatives enough to achieve the Paris Agreement and deliver on the SDGs?
  • What can be done to incentivise further action? How does this fit with the policy nexus?

Moderator: Stephanie Pfeifer, CEO, Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change

Panellists:
Fong Yee Chan, Senior Product Manager, Sustainable Investment, FTSE Russell
Adam Matthews,Director of Ethics & Engagement,The Church of England Pensions Board, Co-Chair, Transition Pathway Initiative
Andreas Stang, Head of ESG, PFA

 

 11:40

PANEL: Investible projects on the horizon

  • What projects and sectors are PE investors finding most compelling?
  • What are the future technological and green trends that will require investor support over the next 5-10 years?
  • The private equity investment time horizon: is this matching up with the available green and sustainable investment opportunities?
  • Long-term merchant risk pricing for renewables: how significant is it for PE?

Moderator: Jim Totty, Managing Partner, Earth Capital

Panellists:
Jonathan Maxwell, CEO and Founder, SDCL
Alex O'Cinneide, Founder and CEO, Gore Street Capital
Michael Hall, Head of ESG and Impact, Development Partners International

 

 12:20

PRESENTATION: Sustainability-linked indexes

  •  How best to invest in green indices?
  • Trends and outlook for climate and environmental ETFs
  • Adopting AI-based ESG data: how does it work?
  • Can you have an adequately diversified green passive strategies or is there a risk of concentration of capital and green bubbles?
  • How can this be mitigated against?
  • How to integrate smart beta and ESG into passive strategies

Speaker:
Stuart Doole, Global Head of New Product Development Index Research, MSCI

 12:20

PANEL: The LP vs GP view on green investing

  • How are LPs and GPs thinking about green investing?
  • What is the demand for low carbon investments? Are LPs are asking for more low carbon investments from GPs?
  • How differentiated are LPs and GPs approaches under the green umbrella?
  • What are the different trends for venture capital, PE and infrastructure investing?
  • What does that mean for the types of capital available and how it is being deployed?

Moderator: Emmanuel Parmentier, Partner, INDEFI

Panellists:
Keimpe Keuning, Executive Director, LGT Capital Partners
Jérôme Duthu-Bengtzon, Principal, Infrastructure and Real Assets Team, Pantheon
Therése Lennehag, Head of Sustainability, EQT Partners

 

12:50

LUNCH

13:50

PANEL: Impact investing – how should investors approach it?

  • Best practices in assessing and demonstrating impact
  • How can you demonstrate to the investor base that impact investing is worth it?
  • How to understand and report on the social aspects that are interlinked with green and sustainable investing
  • Risk management: is it well understood?
  • Can impact investing break out of being largely private equity and into listed equites?

 Moderator: Peter Cripps, Editor, Environmental Finance

Panellists: 
Lisa Beauvilain, Head of Sustainability & ESG, Managing Director, Impax Asset Management
Sarika Goel, Responsible Investment, Manager Research, Mercer
Johanna Raynal, Director, ESG and Impact, Swedfund
Dirk-Jan Verzuu, Portfolio Manager, Global Impact Portfolio, PGGM

 

14:30

PRESENTATION: Mitigating against risk and stranded assets

  • To what extent are environmental externalities appearing on balance sheets?
  • Which sectors are most vulnerable – both directly and indirectly?
  • Sector specific analysis of share price sustainability
  • Assessing physical risks: how investors and asset owners can analyse climate risk in within an equity portfolio
  • What analytical tools are being used to screen investments and decarbonise portfolios? How can scenario analysis help?

Speaker: Christa Clapp, Research Director, Climate Finance, CICERO

14:50

CASE STUDY: Translating climate science into financial risk

  • What do investors need to know?
  • How best to use climate data and information to inform decisions
  • Managing long-term liabilities in the context of a changing climate
  • What can climate science tell us about future trends for the direction of industrials and manufacturing?
  • Building climate resilience: how can investors help?

Speaker: Dr Richenda Connell, Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer, Acclimatise

15:10

CORPORATE VIEWPOINTS: supporting transition strategies for healthy shareholder values

  • What environmental externalities are corporates concerned by and how are they assessing risk?
  • How can impact funds help corporates transform business practices and supply chains and, in turn, ensure sustainable shareholder returns?
  • What do corporates require from such pools of capital?
  • How are customer facing corporates thinking about the sustainability desires of their customer? How does this link back to transition strategies?
  • What support do corporates needs in order to adhere to disclosure and reporting requirements?
  • What needs to be in place for an investment fund to be interested in project driven investments?

 

 Moderator: Michael Hurley, Staff Writer, Environmental Finance

Speakers:
Christian Didier, Nature & Sustainability Finance Director, Danone
Keyvan Macedo, Head of Climate Change & Environmental Impact, Natura 

15:40

COFFEE

16:10

PANEL: Pension fund perspective – mobilising drivers for change

  • How can pension funds can be drivers for change in a more coordinated way?
  • Asset allocation: how does this influence available funding flows into new investments?
  • What are the constraints when seeking specific impact/ESG/climate goals?
  • The changing profile of the pension fund: to what extent is it encroaching into areas typically funded by private equity? What does this mean for pools of capital and available opportunities?
  • Why aren't asset owners driving asset managers into more sustainable products as default?
  • How do ESG factors fit in with trustees' fiduciary duty?

Moderator: Rhian-Mari Thomas, Chief Executive Officer, Green Finance Institute

Panellists:

George Latham, Managing Partner, WHEB Asset Management
Peter Lööw, Head of Responsible Investments, Alecta
Michael Marshall, Director of Responsible Investment and Engagement, LGPS Central
Jacqueline van Voorthuizen, Portfolio Manager, Balance Sheet Management, PGB

16:50

PANEL: Achieving a meaningful two-degree strategy for investors and asset owners

  • What does a two-degree strategy look like?
  • How is disclosure information understood and applied?
  • What are the approaches to allocations and re-allocations?
  • Which meaningful metrics inform decision making?
  • Best practices of asset owners and challenges in the near and long-term
  • Preparing for a variety of scenarios through an index approach

Moderator:
Rory Sullivan, Co-Founder and Director, Chronos Sustainability

Panellists:
Colin Baines, Investment Engagement Manager, Friends Provident Foundation
Thora Frost, Senior Client Manager, Green Finance, Carbon Trust
Marc Guyot, Head of ESG, IBO France
Adrian Rimmer, Senior Advisor, Green Finance, London Stock Exchange Group

17.30

Close of conference and networking drinks reception