Science-based or scenario-based? Corporate investment for a stable climate

03 July 2018

View Briefing

The Oxford Martin Principles for Climate-Conscious Investment were developed in response to the fossil fuel divestment movement to provide a framework for robust, credible and effective engagement between investors and companies on the issue of climate change. They set out a number of requirements for companies to be considered appropriate recipients of climate-conscious investment.

The recent publications of the Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI), ‘Carbon Performance Assessment in oil and gas’ and ‘The state of transition in the coal mining, electricity and oil and gas sectors: TPI’s latest assessment , provide an opportunity to apply the Oxford Martin Principles to an operational assessment of corporate transition plans. The Sectoral Decarbonization Approach (SDA) used by the TPI (also proposed by the Science Based Targets Initiative) compares a company’s planned emission pathway against the evolution of emissions in the appropriate sector under one or more ‘low-carbon benchmark’ scenarios.