Zeroing in

Brunel’s founders placed Responsible Investment at the heart of our priorities, and the theme where we have made most rapid progress is Climate Change.

2024 has been a challenging year, with all kinds of pressures across energy costs and energy security. The need to continue with the energy transition has been reinforced by also seeing communities across the world devastated by floods, drought and severe hurricanes.

In our first Climate Change Policy (published in 2020), we set out our ambition to help create an industry fit for the transition – and part of that mission is to show the way, leading by example. (See our five-pronged approach.)

We are conducting a deep dive on the primary drivers of the portfolio decarbonisation achieved thus far and are gathering extensive data on our Scope III emissions in order to target those too. These projects reflect both the underlying complexity of decarbonisation and our ambition to target a comprehensive approach. But the chart below shows progress thus far on that initial Scope I and Scope II emissions target – and that progress is very real.

We also set targets and track our progress against those targets via annual reporting, and continued monitoring. Since launching our policy, Brunel has reduced the fossil fuel exposure of our portfolios by close to 89.8%. At outset, we set an interim target for our Brunel Aggregate Portfolio, which covers all our listed portfolios: to cut carbon exposures by 50% by 2030 on Scope I and Scope II emissions, against a 2019 baseline. That implied an annual reduction of 7%. Our exposure reduction against that original target is currently at 57%.

Whilst we acknowledge the progress we have made in our portfolios, the global challenge remains larger than ever, and the priority must be for the entire global economy to change.

RI themes

Where Brunel has led on climate change, we are seeking to make similar progress on two other core RI priorities, each of which is inextricably connected to climate change risk.

The first is BIODIVERSITY & NATURE. A strong example of a Brunel biodiversity investment is in regenerative farming in the US: MeadowLark Lands.

The second is HUMAN RIGHTS & SOCIAL ISSUES. A good example of an investment that reflects this priority in a special needs bus service in the Nordics that is 78% renewables-powered: Nobina Rise.