August 25, 2020
Canada’s private sector needs reliable and consistent data and information to play its critical role in addressing climate risks and harnessing clean and resilient growth opportunities. The existing transparency gap is distorting market risk assessment, slowing progress on the low-carbon transition, and leaving Canada’s economy vulnerable to impacts.
In its final report, the Canadian Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance recommended forming a Canadian Centre for Climate Information and Analytics (C3IA) as a trusted single-stop source for authoritative climate data and information relevant to sustainable finance.
Bridging the transparency gap through the C3IA would allow markets to respond to climate risk and seize opportunity, ultimately allocating capital towards:
- areas of the economy that are building resilience to climate impacts; and
- areas of the economy that are aligned to low-carbon pathways, technologies, and other solutions.
Summary of Findings:
Across more than 50 interviews, experts echo that a lack of transparency is distorting economic activity away from the best available solutions for climate change. This research sheds light on specific data gaps and pain points, and how the C3IA can help.
Results are clustered into three pillars, and explore topics such as:
- How common metrics, methodologies and guidelines can support TCFD disclosure, including for forward-looking scenario analysis (Pillar 1)
- How companies can showcase climate ambition in a way that provides a clear and relative sense of ambition (Pillar 1)
- How activities are classified as green or transition-linked and how these compare to domestic and international standards (Pillar 2)
- How government incentives are supporting green, resilient, or transition-linked investments, and the environmental impacts of these investments (Pillar 2)
- How standard labelling and data collection in the built environment and energy retrofits can build the business case for investment (Pillar 2)
- How up-to-date and forward-looking information on climate hazards (and the steps that have already been taken to alleviate those hazards) is an essential precursor to building resilience to the physical risks from climate change (Pillar 3)
