The Australian Government (specifically the Department of Environment and Energy) has released its long awaited 2017 Review of Climate Change Policies. Throughout 2017, the Department consulted widely with industry and other stakeholders to get views on future policy direction on energy and climate change. The terms of reference for this review were set some time ago and the review was to include: the opportunities and challenges of reducing emissions on a sector-by-sector ba

If you're somewhat close to the world of climate change mitigation, you would no doubt be aware that the the 23rd Conference of Parties is in progress in Bonn, though it is hosted by Fiji. This version of the COP is largely expected to be a more focussed on technical details rather than sweeping statements (such as COP21 in Paris for example). Not that this conference won't have any solid outcomes however - there are a number of interested parties looking to see if there will

In Australia, the Commonwealth Bank spent quite a bit of time in the headlines this week. There was one news story however that got lost amongst the other big stories. This week, proceedings were filed in the Federal Court of Australia on behalf of two Commonwealth Bank shareholders. The shareholders allege that the bank has failed to adequately disclose climate change risk in its 2016 annual report. They are also seeking an injunction to prevent these omissions in future ann

Back in 2009, the G20 formed the Financial Stability Board (FSB) as the successor to the Financial Stability Forum. The FSB has a critical role in the reform of international financial regulation. At the G20 meeting in 2015, the FSB were asked to start to consider climate risk. The major economies that make up the G20 have a vested interest in ensuring financial systems are resilient to risks that may materialise in the future. In the years preceding the 2015 G20 meeting, the

COP21 targets The 21st session of the Conference of Parties (COP) at the Paris Climate Change Conference in 2015 culminated in the Paris Agreement. The aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep global temperature rise this century to well below 2°C, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase further to 1.5°C. Under the Agreement, signatory nations set their own emissions reduction targets; called Nationally Determined Contributions. Since COP21, 132 out of a total 19