Treasury aims new climate transition task force at companies

The UK Transition Plan Taskforce, introduced on April 25, will develop measures to tackle greenwashing and support UK companies in their plans to transition to net zero carbon emissions.

This includes the development of sustainability-linked instruments and investor stewardship, as well as financial regulation and corporate strategy.

Large companies and certain financial sector firms will be required to publish transition plans from 2023.

The new task force will be co-chaired by John Glen, economic secretary to the Treasury, and Amanda Blanc, chief executive of Aviva.

Glen said he is “delighted” that the task force is up and running. 

“[This supports] the chancellor’s ambition to become the world’s first net zero-aligned financial centre,” he said.

Blanc said everyone in the UK will be touched by the climate crisis, so all individuals depend on shifting the economy to net zero as soon as possible. 

“Preventing the worst impacts of climate change will take all businesses developing ambitious, consistent transition plans to get us to a low-carbon future,” she added.

Sacha Sadan, director of environment, social and governance at the Financial Conduct Authority, said: “We are delighted to join the Transition Plan Taskforce and will work with it to promote global consistency and comparability in the disclosure of transition plans. 

“We expect to draw on the task force’s outputs to encourage well-governed and credible transition plans, building on existing Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures guidance, which we have already integrated into our climate-related disclosure rules for listed companies and regulated firms.” 

Since January 1, a number of UK companies are required to disclose climate-related information as part of the TCFD.

This includes regulated asset managers, which now have to disclose the climate-related attributes of their products.

This article first appeared on FTAdviser.com