“It is exciting to have this opportunity to contribute to the creation of a comprehensible and transparent system for driving capital in a sustainable direction,” comments Karl-Oskar Olming.
During the year the European Commission established a taxonomy that defines the threshold values that a business must stay within to be in compliance with the Paris Agreement’s goal to slow global warming. SEB’s Marie Baumgarts was a member of the Technical Expert Group that worked on the taxonomy.
This work is now continuing in a new expert group known as the Platform on Sustainable Finance.
“We are now proceeding with a broader effort to create a taxonomy also for areas such as protection of biodiversity, the transition to a circular economy, protection of water and marine resources, and pollution prevention,” says Olming.
The work is planned to conducted over a two-year period. There are also plans, over time, to create a social taxonomy and a “brown taxonomy”. The latter includes threshold levels for businesses with a strongly negative environmental impact.
The expert group includes some 50 members who represent industry and stakeholder organisations, authorities, the academic and research community, and a number of large companies. The financial sector is represented by three banks: SEB, Allianz and BNP Paribas.
“As a member of this panel we will gain important knowledge and insight about the process and will establish many contacts with other banks and bank associations in Europe,” Olming says.