Brunel Spring: Fresh focus on climate policy & reporting

While policymakers globally have stalled and progress on decarbonisation has slowed, Brunel’s progress continued in 2023 across a wide array of climate-related commitments.

Brunel recently reported on 2023 progress against its seven RI and stewardship priority themes in its RI & Stewardship Outcomes Report – climate change is just one of these themes. In a set of communications through June, Brunel is offering a far more granular review of our progress on climate change across 2023.

Painting by numbers

Progress on real-world change can be hard to demonstrate in numbers on a short-term basis, but Brunel maintains a strong belief in the importance of climate-related data, and therefore uses several metrics to report progress. For example, in 2023:

57% reduction in carbon intensity against our 2019 baseline across Brunel Aggregate Portfolio (BAP)
89.8% reduction in reserves intensity across BAP
85% of our AUM have a Paris-aligned target set against them – offering a clear path to achieving Net Zero
92% of assets in scope have a Paris-aligned target set against them
14.2% of the portfolio is invested in companies with exposure to green business activities

Climate priorities

Fundamentally, Brunel targets progress against our five climate priorities:

Progress was made against each of these priorities in 2023. For example:

Policy: Target met through direct and collective engagement with UK government
Products: 85% of our AuM has Paris Aligned targets set
Portfolios: 100% of directly-held high-impact industries and banks to disclose own material scope 3 emissions by 2030; 100% of AUM in largest directly-held IT companies to disclose own upstream & downstream scope 3 emissions by 2030 (plus carbon intensity, above)
Positive Impact: £1.1bn in labelled bonds and sustainable investment exposure
Persuasion: 70% of financed emissions (across listed equity & bonds) in material sectors aligned/aligning or subject to direct/collective engagement & stewardship actions by June 2024 – increasing to 90% by June 2027

Coordinated reporting

The Climate Progress Report – due for publication on 11 June – forms a key element in our annual RI reporting. Last year, Brunel published a new Climate Change Policy 2023-30 that informs our activities and reporting priorities. In May 2024, we published our RI & Stewardship Outcomes Report. In June we will publish our 2024 Climate Progress Report and Climate-Related Product Report.

These reports not only demonstrate the breadth of climate-related activity that Brunel is undertaking but meets the requirements of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The forthcoming Climate-Related Product Report supersedes the former Carbon Metrics Report.