InfluenceMap

🛎️ 🚨 New from InfluenceMap - Untapped Potential: Asset Owners and Climate Policy Influence This new analysis of the world's 30 largest insurers and pension funds (representing over $17 trillion in assets) finds that only a limited number are utilizing their influential position to drive climate policy advocacy in line with science-based pathways to net zero.   This is despite the fact that asset owners’ long-term investment horizons and influential position in the financial system make them potentially powerful advocates for government policy to achieve international climate goals. The levers available to asset owners to affect policy change fall into two categories: their stewardship practices over investee companies’ lobbying and their own direct climate policy advocacy. The research assesses these 15 insurers and 15 pension funds in both areas. Key findings: 💡 There is an overall lack of stewardship on climate policy engagement among asset owners, with 73% scoring a D+ or below according to InfluenceMap’s analysis. Generally, low scores are driven by low levels of transparency on stewardship activities. 💡Asset owners are not achieving their maximum direct policy advocacy potential, and there is room for increased climate advocacy across regions and types of asset owner. 💡No asset owner is fully transparent around its indirect lobbying via industry associations. Seven of the 30 asset owners assessed (23%) maintain links to industry groups whose climate policy advocacy is misaligned with science-based pathways to limit warming to 1.5°C, and who have actively obstructed climate policies for the financial sector and the real economy. The research also finds a core group of asset owners showing leadership on one or more of the areas of influence available to them. These emerging leaders prove it is possible to influence climate policy through multiple avenues and provide best practice examples for other institutions. Cleo Rank, Program Manager at InfluenceMap, said: “Although it is encouraging to see a few asset owners actively stewarding companies and asset managers on climate lobbying, and engaging in robust direct policy advocacy, these companies represent only a fraction of the sector. By failing to engage, many asset owners are ceding their influence to more actively engaged industry associations that are often advocating against meaningful change. The commitments of groups like the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance are at risk of being undermined if their members do not fully buy in to its recommendations.” Download the full report here: https://lnkd.in/etgJsSFW Read the coverage here: https://lnkd.in/e4MVxUfw Dylan Tanner Daan Van Acker Bonnie Steinberg Cleo Rank Rebecca Vaughan Kitty Hatchley

The discussions around COP29 focused a lot on how certain parts of the corporate sector are negatively influencing and delaying climate policy action. But they also revealed how enormous the opportunity is for companies to help drive the positive change on much-needed climate policy and regulations. Opportunities for companies to collaborate transparently to support science-aligned policy, both with each other and with governments. There are now numerous strategies and collaborations underway to achieve this and to reduce the significant and negative influence of the fossil fuel sector. A great take comes this week from Auden Schendler in the Harvard Business Review. Featuring a quote from our Executive Director, Dylan Tanner “One of the reasons we founded InfluenceMap was to arm the growing number of corporate executives who realize systems change is needed, rather than tinkering with Scope 1 and 2 emissions. We are working to identify people in a growing number of companies to help build this movement and trigger collaboration.” Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/e8VqtUTa Read our analysis of Corporate Climate Policy Leaders for 2024: https://lnkd.in/enrTE9-9

Join InfluenceMap for our next webinar 'An Introduction to FinanceMap' on December 5! This webinar will be an opportunity to learn more about the leading data platform for assessing climate and finance. Featuring: ➡ InfluenceMap's Senior Analysts Tom Alcoran and Bonnie Steinberg to introduce the platform and share recent insights into the climate finance landscape ➡ Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), Associate Director, Climate Change & Environmental Justice, Tracey Rembert discussing the role of investors in driving climate policy change Sign up here 👉 https://lnkd.in/e8TKCz_e

As The Global #PlasticsTreaty negotiations are now underway in #Busan - read InfluenceMap's latest briefing on the corporate engagement the Treaty has faced since this process began: ✴️ 93% of negative engagement is from the petrochemical and chemical sector ✴️ These entities tend to favor recycling over caps (against IPCC guidance) ✴️ But engagement from these negative actors only makes up 20% of overall corporate engagement on the treaty Reacting to the findings - U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said: "The plastics/fossil fuel industry is trying hard to kneecap the UN Global Plastics Treaty, which is exactly why we have to mandate lobbying disclosure by industry representatives and implement rules around conflicts of interest. If allowed to work from the shadows, bad faith industry interference will block progress toward saving our oceans and fighting climate change." 🌏 Read the full briefing here: https://lnkd.in/gUXzQ3iD

📣 ⏰ New from InfluenceMap - Petrochemical & Chemical Companies Isolated in Attempts to Derail the UN Global Plastics Treaty Top Lines ⤵ A new briefing released today by InfluenceMap tracks corporate engagement on the #UNGlobalPlasticsTreaty ahead of the final discussions in Busan, Korea, next week. It reveals intense oppositional advocacy from petrochemical and chemical companies and their industry associations - mirroring tactics used for decades by the fossil fuel sector to exert influence over climate policy all around the world. However, this research finds that this negative engagement on plastics regulation is not representative of the engagement of the corporate sector as a whole - making up only 20% of advocacy on the treaty by companies and industry associations. This presents a clear opportunity for positive industries engaged in this process to call out the misinformation and lack of ambition ahead of the decision-making that will go on next week. The Research ⤵ InfluenceMap examined 311 incidents of corporate engagement (across a range of channels including consultation responses, media interventions, company statements, and social media) on the UN Global Plastics Treaty since March 2022 and found that 93% of unsupportive statements came from the chemical and petrochemical sectors. These actors have consistently advocated for a limited scope to the treaty, prioritizing ‘downstream measures,’ such as recycling ♻, over measures that would reduce plastic production 🙅♀️ and the use of harmful plastics. They also repeatedly attempt to frame plastics as environmentally friendly and essential for the energy transition. These arguments are misaligned with IPCC guidance on circular economy policy. 🚩 InfluenceMap also found that 10 chemical and petrochemical companies—BASF, Chevron-Phillips, Covestro, Dow Inc, ExxonMobil, LyondellBasell, SABIC, Shell, Sinopec, and TotalEnergies—are members of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, an organization that promotes a vision “to end plastic waste entering the environment and to create circular systems that keep materials and products in use for as long as possible.” However, in seeming contradiction to this stated aim, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste did not appear to support an ambitious UN Global Plastics Treaty in 2022–24, and many of its members continued to advocate negatively on the Treaty as well as on national-level circular economy policy. Calling into question companies’ commitment to the stated objective of the alliance and its support for the creation of a circular economy for plastics. Read the full analysis here: https://lnkd.in/gUXzQ3iD Dylan Tanner Ed Collins Ines Urman Venetia Roxburgh Kitty Hatchley

📣 🚨 InfluenceMap has launched the COP29 Corporate Climate Advocacy Landscape Assessment as part of its COP29 Corporate Accountability Platform. This new resource identifies the companies represented at COP29 by cross-referencing the UNFCCC-disclosed list of registered attendees against InfluenceMap’s database on corporate lobbying. ⚔ This year’s findings reflect a pitched battle between companies in the fossil fuel value chain that oppose science-aligned policy action, and a growing list of highly positive, strategically engaged companies, or ‘climate policy leaders’ who are increasingly active. Key Findings:  ❌ Only 17% of the companies attending COP29 have science-aligned climate policy advocacy positions (as defined by the IPCC 1.5C pathways).  ❌ These companies are matched by a further 21% of companies in attendance that are actively pushing for policy pathways likely to lock-in warming scenarios well in excess of the internationally agreed targets set out by the 2015 Paris Agreement.   ❌ 1/3 of industry associations attending COP29 covered by the LobbyMap database oppose science-aligned climate policy. The analysis suggests that although the proportion of companies of attending COP that demonstrate science-aligned policy engagement has almost doubled (from below 10% of corporate representatives in 2023 to almost 20% in 2024) a powerful minority of very active and influential companies and industry associations from the fossil fuel value chain are well represented at proceedings again this year. These entities are likely to be using their access to oppose progress on climate from within the confines of the event. 🛑 Oppositional companies with more than 10 COP29 delegates include: ExxonMobil, Gazprom, Petrobras and Lukoil.  🛑 Other negative companies with smaller delegations at COP29 include: Chevron, Eni, BMW, JBS, JFE Steel, Nippon Steel Corporation and Toyota. ❇ Companies that demonstrate science-aligned climate policy engagement and have more than 10 COP29 delegates include: Alphabet, SAP, Schneider Electric and SSE.  ❇ Other positive companies with smaller delegations at COP29 include: Unilever, Trane Technologies, Acciona, Vestas, Microsoft and Iberdrola. 🚩 The list of industry association COP29 attendees includes some of the most influential and negative entities covered by the InfluenceMap database, including The US Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Japan Iron and Steel Federation (JISF), and the Federation of German Industries (BDI). Access the database here: https://lnkd.in/eywgsRjs Read our piece in SDG Action: https://lnkd.in/ehMUA-_z Dylan Tanner Ed Collins Tom Holen Vivek Parekh Mohammed Nasif Rose Harris Tanvi Rahim Kitty Hatchley Georgia Oddie Sofia Shehana Basheer

Happening today in Baku ⬇ 🌐 InfluenceMap's COP29 Event "Corporate Accountability on Climate Policy Influencing" - at 4:20pm AZT, Business Pavilion E13 The event will feature a keynote address from United States Senator, Sheldon Whitehouse followed by a panel discussion chaired by We Mean Business Coalition's Dominic Gogol. Panelists: 💡 Julie Kjestrup, Head of Policy and Thought Leadership at Velux Group 💡Thomas Lingard Global Head of Sustainability at Unilever, and 💡Peter van der Werf Head of Active Ownership, Executive Director at Robeco This event seeks to initiate an urgently needed discussion on what civil society, investors, and positive business can do to ensure processes for developing and implementing climate policy are free from the undue influence of fossil fuel and other vested interests. For this event InfuenceMap is partnering with We Mean Business Coalition, #RacetoZero (led by the UN Climate Change High-Level Champions), and Ceres, Inc. More details here: https://lnkd.in/e5wFVfbK Dylan Tanner Caroline Heneghan Ed Collins Kendra Haven Kitty Hatchley

Join InfluenceMap’s next webinar on corporate climate policy engagement on November 20th! ➡ InfluenceMap's Director of LobbyMap Ed Collins will introduce our work & moderate ➡ InfluenceMap's Vivek Parekh will explore science-aligned corporate climate advocacy & Tom Holen will highlight recent trends coming out of COP29 ➡ BNP Paribas Asset Management's Rachel Crossley, Head of Stewardship, Europe, will explore how investors can use our data to drive science-aligned corporate climate policy engagement Sign up here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eR2hK7SR

📣 🚨 InfluenceMap has now launched the Fossil Fuel Misinformation Tracker as part of its COP29 Corporate Accountability Platform. This new resource features analysis of the climate advocacy of over 100 fossil fuel companies and industry associations in the year since COP28 in Dubai. ❌ It has identified nearly 2,500 examples of these groups deploying misleading climate arguments identified by InfluenceMap to be part of a highly strategic oppositional playbook. ❌ These narratives have been identified across a range of channels including consultation responses, media interventions, company statements and social media. This work uses the three categories of fossil fuel industry narratives identified in InfluenceMap's July report 'How the Oil Industry Has Sustained Market Dominance Through Policy Influence' (https://lnkd.in/gFAJtgYw). These are: “Solution Skepticism”, “Policy Neutrality”, and “Affordability and Energy Security”. The research shows that arguments around Solution Skepticism and Affordability and Energy Security to have been deployed most often in the last year, but all three are likely to be used regularly by fossil fuel actors at COP29. Each of these narratives is misaligned with science-aligned policy pathways set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - a more comprehensive explanation of this can be found in the tracker. Read the full analysis here: https://lnkd.in/dMJeYC8k