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Quick Fix
— Impact investing has grown into a $715 billion market, and investors in the space have found reason for optimism even amid the pandemic.
— The Trump administration is signaling concerns with offshore wind development in the Northeast.
— Europeans are learning to love the car-free cities, and they want them to stick around after the pandemic.
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Driving the Day
GROWING OPTIMISM — Even as the coronavirus pandemic took hold, some Wall Street do-gooders found reason for hope.
An annual survey of the industry released Thursday by The Global Impact Investing Network arrives in a world gripped by the kinds of problems impact investors are trying to fix. The group’s survey of its 294 members, taken between February and April, found that more than two-thirds believe their money will deliver on its social and environmental goals, despite the human and economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic.
Impact investors, who measure success based on the social good their money buys in addition to the financial return it delivers, have grown into a $715 billion market, according to the report, which calculated the broadest measure of a movement that’s been growing rapidly in recent years.
“We’re obviously in the midst of an epic series of crises,” GIIN President Amit Bouri told POLITICO. “As we come out of it, I expect that there will be a much broader social mandate for all investors.”
“You can imagine any politician, local or national, will be turning to pension funds, public or private, and saying, ‘Show me what you’re doing for your community’,” Bouri said.
GIIN, a non-profit association founded after the last financial crisis, has grown from about 20 members to 294 in 48 countries. Along the way, the small universe of impact investors has become more sophisticated — and more accepted by Wall Street. Now the market is primed for even bigger growth just as capital and ideas are needed to address urgent global issues of economic inequality, racism and the environment.
But 78 percent of GIIN’s respondents cited government as a significant or moderate challenge to the market.
“Government is under-utilizing the opportunity to mobilize impact investors,” Bouri said.
Around the Nation
HEADWINDS OFFSHORE — Offshore wind is anticipated to contribute heavily to the renewable energy goals of states and businesses in the Northeast, but a report out this week from the Trump administration may signal trouble ahead for those prospects. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management determined the proposed Vineyard Wind facility off the coast of Massachusetts would have “major” adverse effects on sea life and industries like commercial fishing, POLITICO’s Gavin Bade reports. Work on Vineyard Wind has already been delayed by BOEM’s decision to study the cumulative effects of 13 additional proposed offshore wind farms along the East Coast before permitting the single facility. Now, BOEM appears to be signaling that Vineyard’s preferred approach may not be workable, one analyst told Gavin.
For oil companies, it may be a different story. Sources told POLITICO’s Ben Lefebvre that the administration is planning to open up federal waters off the coast of Florida to oil and natural gas drilling, but not until after the election. The move would be unpopular with voters from both parties in the Sunshine State, along with the array of tourism and natural resources-based businesses that rely on the state’s beaches.
— Utility regulators in New Jersey approved a new energy efficiency program designed to reduce electricity and natural gas in the state. POLITICO’s Samantha Maldonado has the details.
Around the World
KEEP THE CARS AWAY — Europeans like how their cities have looked with fewer cars on the roads, and they want to keep it that way even as travel restrictions are lifted after the pandemic. Nearly seven in 10 people told pollsters they wanted to maintain policies designed to limit air pollution, including restrictions on cars in city centers. YouGov surveyed 7,545 respondents in major cities in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K. and the Brussels metropolitan area last month for the NGOs Transport & Environment and the European Public Health Alliance, and they shared the results with POLITICO’s Joshua Posaner, Hanne Cokelaere and Aitor Hernández-Morales.
The results could provide momentum for sustainable transportation policies like expanded bike lanes and pedestrian access, although the poll found just lukewarm support for public transportation. Some 39 percent of Germans said they will avoid transit "due to the risk of contagion of the coronavirus," although more than half of Spaniards would return with “sufficient hygiene measures” in place.
City dwellers want more urban space: For the survey, residents of several major European cities were asked whether they agree that cities must take action to curb air pollution by reserving more public space for walking, cycling and public transport. Here's how they responded:
PAY UP — Apple should end its planned obsolescence policy and pay Europeans whose devices were damaged by forced updates to the iOS operating system, consumer group Euroconsumers said in a letter addressed to the company.
— Portugal does not know how much plastic waste is recycled in the country, the government admitted this week, blaming the packaging industry for not disclosing the correct numbers.
— Blackrock’s work with the European Commission is facing renewed scrutiny. French Green MEP Damien Carême tweeted that he didn’t believe BlackRock could avoid conflicts of interest while its advisory arm studies sustainable-finance rules for the commission.
CANADIAN CONSTRUCTION — The Canadian government wants to use a new type of cement in its building projects that produces 10 percent less carbon in a bid to help clean up the emissions-intensive sector. POLITICO’s Maura Forrest has the details.
Sustainable Investing
FOCUS ON PEOPLE — Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman pushed back on the suggestion that the coronavirus pandemic would simply offer a temporary focus on the importance of the “social” aspect of environmental, social and governance issues during a panel discussion this week, POLITICO’s Kellie Mejdrich reports. “By doing the right thing for our employees, by doing the right thing for society, by doing the right thing for the environment, it actually creates less risk over the long term and allows us to have a longer-term horizon on delivering those returns to our shareholders,” Friedman said in the virtual discussion hosted by CNBC.
“I think this dialogue is the most healthy I've seen it, since I've been working at NASDAQ to be honest,” Friedman said. “And as a CEO myself of a public company it's refreshing to know that I can have a discussion internally with my board, and the shareholders, about what our broader role is, in addition to making sure we're delivering returns to them.”
EYE ON ENERGY
HAVE A GAS — Interviews with two of Europe’s top oil CEOs caught our eye this week. BP’s Bernard Looney and Shell’s Ben van Beurden are both bullish on a future for natural gas, a reminder that the company’s pledges for “net-zero” carbon emissions does not mean they are planning to exit the petroleum business. Many environmental groups have scoffed at the pledges as unserious given that the companies still deploy substantial resources for oil and gas extraction. But Looney and van Beurden said they were optimistic about the prospects of developing technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture.
Gas “may be more than a transition fuel,” Looney told IHS Markit’s Dan Yergin in a recent CERAWeek interview. “It will have to be decarbonized. That's absolutely essential. We have got to take that carbon out of hydrocarbons, and we have to stop comparing gas to coal and start comparing gas to zero.”
Van Beurden said government policy would be needed to guide a global transition to net-zero emissions. “If we believe that somehow the market is going to take care of this, that you put a price on carbon and everything will sort itself out, or that we can shame companies into doing it by having ESG frameworks that will tell them what is right and what is wrong, then I think we’re kidding ourselves,” he told Bloomberg.
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