Although a majority of New Zealand investors have board-level awareness when it comes to climate risks and strategies, only 17% of them are investing in climate solutions such as renewable energy or low-carbon infrastructure.
And only 13% of New Zealand investors have set public targets to increase these investments.
This has led to calls from organisations such the Centre for Sustainable Finance, Mindful Money and Investor Group on Climate Change for stronger alignment between climate ambition and investment practice.
On Tuesday, these organisations released a report called Survey of Aotearoa New Zealand Investors: Climate Policies and Actions 2025. The report includes data from 27 investors - seven asset owners, 17 asset/fund managers and three wealth managers - representing over $263 billion in assets under management. This is around 54% of the country’s total assets under management.
Climate economics
“Perhaps the most significant development over the past year has been the change in climate economics,” the report says.
“Investment incentives now favour investment in climate solutions. It is disappointing that this has not yet been reflected in an increase in the level of investment by asset owners and fund managers in New Zealand.”
At the same time, the report says, climate risks are accelerating.
“Extreme weather events have increased the economic costs of storms, floods, bushfires and drought, resulting in supply chain disruptions and a wide range of additional costs.”
The report also found:
- 91% of investors reported board-level awareness of climate risks and strategies
- 48% of investors have set net zero targets
- 93% are measuring at least some of the emissions associated with their portfolios
- 63% of New Zealand investors surveyed have undertaken a climate-related physical risk or resilience assessment across any of their assets
“Climate risks are on the increase as well as climate opportunities," the report says.
While investors recognise climate as a core part of management, there are also barriers to climate action for them.
The survey found the top three drivers of climate investing for more than half of respondents were the desire to drive positive environmental and social outcomes, fiduciary duty and management of climate risk.
Only 48% of New Zealand investors say regulatory requirements are a main driver. “By comparison, regulatory requirements is one of the top drivers among Australian investors.”
For most investors there was more than one driver they considered when it came to climate investing with 87% of respondents choosing multiple drivers.
Barriers
A lack of clear definitions/frameworks, policy or regulatory uncertainty, lack of data tools, and a lack of resources and staff are just some of the barriers investors say they face when it comes to climate investing
The lack of clear frameworks and regulatory uncertainty may also reflect difficulties in Climate-related Disclosure reporting, the survey says.
The Climate-related Disclosure (CRD) regime requires major organisations to report on how they will be impacted by climate change - covering areas such as climate-related governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets.
In December 2024, former Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Andrew Bayly asked officials to prepare a discussion document on the country’s climate-related disclosures regime.
Over 57% of investors say they currently produce CRD or other Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures reports.
The report says the survey responses make it clear CRD reporting has been a challenge but overall barriers are "generally perceived to be lower than last year".
Investing in climate solutions
“Investment in climate solutions needs to be rapidly scaled up in order to accelerate decarbonisation and the transition to renewable energy,” the report says.
“The economics of investment in climate solutions have become far more favourable in recent years as the costs of solar panels, battery storage and other clean technologies have continued to fall.
“The most popular opportunity for climate solutions investment is renewable energy generation (71%). There have been significant changes to New Zealand’s policies on climate change,” the report says.
Mindful Money CEO Barry Coates says: “New Zealand investors clearly understand the financial imperative of managing climate risk. But despite falling costs and rising opportunities in clean technologies, investment in climate solutions remains low.”
“This is potentially a missed opportunity for both returns and impact.”
Policy advocacy
The report says: “The voice of finance is important in ensuring there is a policy framework that supports investment into climate solutions and aligning with the net zero transition."
The survey found that 65% of New Zealand investors indicated they have engaged in some form of policy advocacy over the past year.
At 39%, the survey found the most common form of advocacy were submissions to climate-related policy consultations, followed by convening or participating in public seminars and events on climate change at 35%.
The report also found 85% of investors with a net zero emissions target have engaged in climate policy advocacy over the past year, and asset managers were more likely than asset owners to have engaged in policy advocacy.
Growing opportunities
The survey says public and regulatory expectations of the finance sector in taking action on climate change have increased.
Other reports show high levels of public concern over climate change - with the annual survey of the New Zealand public on ethical and impact investing showing 74% of New Zealanders expect their fund should reach net zero before 2050.
But the report says few investors have escalation strategies when companies fail to act on climate change and shareholder activism remains limited compared to places like Australia.
Director of investor practice at Investor Group on Climate Change Duncan Paterson says: “Investors are responding to fiduciary duty and risk management, but they’re also hearing the call from clients and the public."
“The next step is to move from measurement to meaningful investment in the transition.”
The report says there are growing opportunities for investment in climate solutions and there’s an increased interest from New Zealand investors.
“However, this has not yet translated into capital flows.”
The next few years will be critical, the report says.
“As CRD reporting beds down, and the scope of reporting widens to include transition plans and the financial estimates of risks, there will hopefully be more emphasis on forward looking action, rather than the focus on reporting on governance, policies and past emissions.”
25 Comments
Excellent article Mandy.
It's clear to me from https://www.interest.co.nz/rural-news/135012/prime-minister-christopher…
and from https://www.nzfirst.nz/2023 ' Agriculture Emissions reduction plan:
- New Zealand First will not support emissions pricing in any form unless adopted by trading partners, especially the European Union
- New Zealand First supports the adoption of standardised farm level reporting
- New Zealand First will incentivise the uptake of the emissions reduction mitigations, such as low methane genetics, and low methane producing animal food, by repurposing money funded by the emissions trading scheme revenue and funds earmarked for the purchase of overseas carbon credits. Support developing science, which is common sense as opposed to consigning and transferring billions of dollars from our economy to foreign economies as our response to climate change action.
that the current coalition Government will do nothing useful to plan and implement any sort of actions to protect NZ from GHG warming consequences.
Total indictment of the current lot. Total lip service they pay to one of the greatest threats to our civilization. "We believe climate change is a real and dangerous threat to the country"... while doing nothing to mitigate it or even think about reducing it. In fact everywhere I look, they are making it worse, including completely gutting the last lots climate initiatives, pretty much "because Jacinda championed them" just without saying that.
I perceive that investments in climate solutions are low because the returns are low, risk is highish and the rules keep changing
It is good that so many NZ investors can see through the climate industry BS. The report perpetuates the lie, not supported by the IPCC, that "Extreme weather events have increased the economic costs of storms, floods, bushfires and drought". Furthermore, if you actually though there were going to be more storms and floods why would invest in solar panels and windmills?!
"where evidence is lacking or the signal is not present, leading to overall low confidence of an emerging signal.
-
River floods
-
Heavy precipitation and pluvial floods
-
Landslides
-
Drought (all types)
-
Severe wind storms
-
Tropical cyclones
-
Sand and dust storms
-
Heavy snowfall and ice storms
-
Hail
-
Snow avalanche
-
Coastal flooding
-
Marine heat waves"
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapte… Table 12.12
"More frequent losses due to extreme weather, notably storms of tropical, sub-tropical and extra-tropical origin, when combined and after adjusting for changing societal factors, show no trend over the record length."
Normalised New Zealand natural Disaster insurance losses: 1968–2019
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2021.1905595
I really don't know what to say about that last link. Look at the data, particularly at figure 4, Nominal (A) and normalised losses (B). There is a clear trend in the trendline, it start off at ~120m and ends up at about $180m. That's not statistically insignificant. Just looking at the first graph, its clear more recent times have worse normalised losses. Hell, just look at table 4, where 6 of the top 10 normalised seasonal losses are in the 2000's.
As for your first link, classic profile! You have cherry picked where data is missing to try and say the trend is non-existent, but removed all of the rows where data does exist AND there is a worsening trend. Basically you are selectively choosing to ignore reality, by giving us selective information that suits your narrative. Everyone can see the table on page 1856 of the IPCC report, where profile is getting this from. Note that "where evidence is lacking" bit, it could just be that there isn't enough evidence for many of those things to suggest anything.
Geez profile, tell us you are being paid to write this garbage by oil and gas lobbies... without telling us you are being paid to write this.
I donate monthly to an organization that spearheads rewilding projects around the world. They go into areas degraded by humans, and run various projects to regrow reefs, restore forests, bring back wetlands etc. Mossy Earth channel on Youtube.
Two benefits: 1) I feel good about it. 2) I can mention it to human climate impact deniers to quickly get them to stop talking to me.
nkt - that's nice, but it isn't doing diddly squat for the climate.
Restoration of prior degradation is a drop in the bucket compared to total degradation (for every tree planted, we chop down two - but that planted one was a seedling - the two were fully-grown. Good that you feel good - I planted a forest then kept studiously away from the ETS, same feeling but no real impact; maybe the difference is I actually did something.
But there is no point in chasing 'richness', if the pursuit collectively fries the planet (or rapes it of resources, or fills its other sink-capacities).
Here is an article by Bjorn Lomborg. From an article.
Fig. 18. Global weather-related disaster cost share of global GDP 1990–2018. Costs from 1990–2017 from Munich Re in (Pielke 2019), 2018 costs from (MunichRe 2019), global GDP from (Worldbank 2019), using the latest World Bank Global Economic Prospects GDP from January 2019 to estimate global GDP for 2017 and 2018. Linear best estimate, decline is not statistically significant.
And here is the graph.
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0040162520304157-gr18_lrg…
Lomborg is to science what a pimp is to sex.
Sounds promising but under-delivers.
https://whistleblower.org/climate-education-and-communication/climate-c…
https://www.reddit.com/r/climatechange/comments/z32d9r/do_you_guys_know…
The Pernicious Principles of Bjorn Lomborg
Lomborg Discredited [Archive] - Walleye Message Central
Etc Etc; there's a lot more like that. Yet last time I conversed with David Chaston about such matters, Lomborg was his reference. I don't call that journalism - self-reinforcing, but not journalism.
The Millions Behind Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center US Think Tank - DeSmog
Guess they don't know what they're talking about, though...
The insurers will lead this. I know a few in the Reinsurance business and they have amazingly detailed data on trends in NZ and worldwide and associated risk analysis, done by very smart people. They aren't here to save the world but make profit and guess what they are saying.
If they are wrong where's all the new Reinsurance companies offering low cost cover as its all a hoax?
Funny species these humans.
Munich Re love climate change cry babies. They are so worried about climate change they are buying back their own shares.
"With a net result of €5.7bn, we’ve increased our annual profit by more than €1bn year on year. Munich Re’s profit growth has been truly substantial and sustained in the context of our five-year Ambition 2025 strategy programme, which we’ll conclude at the end of the year. This year’s record dividend of €20 embodies our success. Our shareholders will also benefit from a new share buy-back with a volume of €2bn, an increase of €500m. What’s more, we’ll remain ambitious as we seek to boost our annual profit to €6bn this year. Our confidence here reflects our successful renewals as at 1 January 2025, among other factors."
“Global reinsurer capital rose by $5 billion to $720 billion in the first quarter of 2025, surpassing the previous record of $715 billion set in 2024, despite the financial impact of the California wildfires.
According to Aon, this growth was driven by strong retained earnings among established players, with two-thirds reporting double-digit annualised returns on equity."
https://www.artemis.bm/news/reinsurance-capital-outstrips-demand-at-mid…
If it's that good get in the game!!
You attacked Bjorn Lomborg. But you never said were the article above from Gen Re and the World Bank was wrong, Just attacked the messenger.
Light weights like PDK and blobbles only have ad homs. Lomborg receives so much attention from the climate change industry because he is right over the target. They waffle on about "big oil" because they can't have a go at published literature or the IPCC.
"Climate policies also have costs that often vastly outweigh their climate benefits. The Paris Agreement, if fully implemented, will cost $819–$1,890 billion per year in 2030, yet will reduce emissions by just 1% of what is needed to limit average global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Each dollar spent on Paris will likely produce climate benefits worth 11¢."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2019.1609406
"When aggregated by season, there is no trend in normalised losses from weather-related perils; in other words, after we normalise for changes we know to have taken place, no residual signal remains to be explained by changes in the occurrence of extreme weather events, regardless of cause. In sum, the rising cost of natural disasters is being driven by where and how we chose to live and with more people living in vulnerable locations with more to lose, natural disasters remain an important problem irrespective of a warming climate."
Normalised insurance losses from Australian natural disasters: 1966–2017
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2019.1609406#abst…
"Light weights like PDK and blobbles only have ad homs"
You literally ad hominem attack two of us in the same sentence where you claim that all we have are ad hominem attacks. Do you not see the irony here? You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried (actually you do regularly make stuff up, so maybe you could).
You cherry pick left right and centre, refuse to read reports in totality that you reference, instead decide to cherry pick specific lines or specific tables, then claim to be the victim of ad hominem attacks? Hilariously clueless. You actually sound smart, so the only conclusion we could make is that you have an agenda, usually that's one that comes with a financial incentive.
I want you to honestly think about what that graph is showing. Its essentially a graph of made up value vs made up numbers. The GDP measure is virtually meaningless, given that most GDP is in the hands of a few billionaires and its all just numbers in various computers. As the economies of the world have become more and more financialised, GDP has lost meaning to what's happening in the real world. Think of it this way, in 2000 world GDP was $78T and now it is ~$166T and thats in normalised $$ terms. So we are all 112% more wealthy than in 2020 right? We have all shared in a 112% wealth increase right?
No? Many/most of us feel poorer, because that share of wealth has mostly gone to the top 1% while prices have gone up significantly more to boot. GDP is essentially a meaningless comparison, if a hurricane hits Florida tomorrow, none of those billionaires lose money in there financialised assets and the ones that do lose their homes in Florida, well its probably good for GDP, because insurance companies pay out, builders get busy, the government steps in and prints money to bail everyone out, there is a real boom. So the cost of the hurricane is actually a boon to the area. You could see exactly that in Christchurch after the earthquake, there was a real social suffering but not long after Christchurch economic activity boomed, right up until today.
Its simply not the right metric, you may as well say space junk is not a problem because nobody ever died after being hit by space junk. Its a nonsense measure.
Then all climate models are crap because of all the assumptions and things we don't know about the climate.
Climate models are measuring the very thing they are studying. That's quite different to using GDP as a measuring stick to claim global warming isn't a problem. I don't think you can logically conflate the two arguments without some serious mental gymnastics.
Yes, blobbles everyone should read table 12.12 for themselves, especially column 1 " Already emerged in the historical period" to just see how lacking in data BS claims like "Extreme weather events have increased the economic costs of storms, floods, bushfires and drought, resulting in supply chain disruptions and a wide range of additional costs." actually are yet continue to be trotted out by Interest and the climate change industry.
Note columns 2 and 3 are based off RCP8.5 projections. Coal use per capita isn't going to increase sixfold per capita and the population projections used are already implausible.
""...Accounting for this bias indicates RCP8.5 and other ‘business-as-usual scenarios’ consistent with high CO2 forcing from vast future coal combustion are exceptionally unlikely. Therefore, SSP5-RCP8.5 should not be a priority for future scientific research or a benchmark for policy studies."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544217314597
You are hilariously forgetting why 8.5 is no longer a possibility. The world changed course, stopped burning coal at crazy and increasing amounts because we recognised climate change was a real thing and coal burning was mainly responsible for it. That doesn't mean the entire thing was a hoax like you are claiming because at the time of creation 8.5 was a real possibility.
I wonder if you will admit that you modified the text on your original post to remove specific references in the table (i.e. Cherry picked data)? Or do you think cherry picking is OK?
I recommend everyone look at page 1858 for a the full picture now and into the future. And if you want to keep banging your head against a wall profile believing that table 12.1 shows something it does not, even when you cherry pick the data, I suggest you read this from the scientist who created it: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/robert-vautard-8909171aa_my-ipcc-journal…
But let me guess... you will not.
oh blobbles - check stuff before you type! "The world changed course, stopped burning coal"
"Global coal consumption reached a record high of approximately 8.79 billion tonnes (Bt) in 2024, driven primarily by demand for power generation, especially in Asia."
https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-mid-year-update-2025/overview
Even with the record coal consumption RCP 8.5 needs a 6 fold increase per capita and 12 billion people by 2100. Check with PDK if there is enough coal available for a sixfold increase? The always wrong UN has us tapping out at 10 billion in 2080. This century’s dive in fertility numbers has gutted all the climate change scenarios, not just RCP8.5.
No, I didn't edit anything. Check the time stamp. If I could time travel I would be doing more interesting things then editing Interest comments!
I didn't say we didn't stop burning coal, but I guess you did exactly what you always do and read only what you want to read, again cherry picking even quotes and taking them out of context. True to form profile, complete idiocy. I said " The world changed course, stopped burning coal at crazy and increasing amounts" which is exactly right.
For those that have got this far and want to see profiles further misunderstanding of timelines, here's a graph of worldwide coal consumption over time: https://talkmarkets.com/content/commodities/worldwide-coal-consumption?…
RPC8.5 was created in 2011. Look at that graph at 2011, you don't have future information, so you are only able to see the growth of coal consumption. AT THAT POINT RPC8.5 looks entirely plausible, coal consumption had just skyrocketed. Did that rate of increasing consumption continue? NO! Why? Well China's economy went through a structural shift, air quality there suddenly became a key issue, countries climate change policies started to kick in and the ongoing effect from the 2008 financial crisis slowed industrial growth worldwide.
Also note profile doesn't even recognise when he is making edits to source material. Profiles comment reads:
<insert misinterpreted reasoning>:
-
River floods
-
Heavy precipitation and pluvial floods
-
Landslides
-
Drought (all types)
-
Severe wind storms
-
Tropical cyclones
-
Sand and dust storms
-
...
The actual thing he is referencing reads:
- Mean air temperature
- Extreme heat
- Cold spell
- Frost
- Wet and Dry
- Mean precipitation
- River flood
- Heavy precipitation and pluvial flood
- Landslide
- Aridity
- Hydrological drought
- Agricultural and ecological drought
- Fire weather
- ...
He conveniently disregards a whole lot of data points, because they don't fit his narrative. I even showed him the actual scientist dismantling his argument, stating how he has misinterpreted data... yet still he doubles down. Its like talking to a person so wrapped up in conspiracy theories they can't tell even when they themselves lie.
I listed the natural phenomena from the table where "where evidence is lacking or the signal is not present, leading to overall low confidence of an emerging signal" that were in complete contrast to the reports statement above - namely "“Extreme weather events have increased the economic costs of storms, floods, bush fires and drought”. If that is your big conspiracy you need to try harder!
"Under SSP3-7.0 [17.5% lower than RCP 8.5] by 2100, global coal consumption increases by ~230% over 2023 levels, reaching more than 50% of total energy consumption. What does that mean in more comprehensible terms? The additional ~380 exajoules of coal consumption by 2100 implies the building of more than 7,500 new coal plants (1GW) or more than 100 new plants per year from, 2025 to 2100."
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/constructing-climate-catastrophism
"At 2 143 GW, global coal generation capacity is now 13% higher than it was when the Paris climate agreement was signed nearly a decade ago.
Though it has vowed to "strictly control" new coal capacity, China - the world's biggest energy consumer - put an additional 30.5 GW into operation last year, more than 70% of the world's total. But that was less than the 47.4 GW China added in 2023.
Less than half of what would need to be built to meet RCP 7.0, let alone RCP 8.5, and that does not include retirements! RCP8.5 was never plausible. Especially when you consider where you are going to get your coal from, and who is going to use it.
https://www.interest.co.nz/public-policy/127062/katharine-moody-calls-m…
Glad you admitted you cherry picked data.
Like I said, at the time of writing, it looked like global coal consumption was accelerating at a parabolic rate. At that rate of consumption, 8.5 was plausible.
You are giving me links from people now, not at the time of writing. This isn't a hard concept to comprehend, but I guess the old quote works for your comprehension profile: "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair"
Glad you admitted you cherry picked data.
Like I said, at the time of writing, it looked like global coal consumption was accelerating at a parabolic rate. At that rate of consumption, 8.5 was plausible.
You are giving me links from people now, not at the time of writing. This isn't a hard concept to comprehend, but I guess the old quote works for your comprehension profile: "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair"
Glad you admitted you cherry picked data.
Like I said, at the time of writing, it looked like global coal consumption was accelerating at a parabolic rate. At that rate of consumption, 8.5 was plausible.
You are giving me links from people now, not in 2011 when RCP8.5 was written. Its easy to look back now and say "Look at the data from 2011 onwards, clearly RCP8.5 isn't plausible" because the world stopped burning at an increasing rate. This isn't a hard concept to comprehend, but I guess the old quote works for your comprehension profile: "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair"
Glad you admitted you cherry picked data.
Like I said, at the time of writing, it looked like global coal consumption was accelerating at a parabolic rate. At that rate of consumption, 8.5 was plausible.
You are giving me links from people now, not in 2011 when RCP8.5 was written. Its easy to look back now and say "Look at the data from 2011 onwards, clearly RCP8.5 isn't plausible" because the world stopped burning at an increasing rate. This isn't a hard concept to comprehend, but I guess the old quote works for your comprehension profile: "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair"
Yes, China is doing very well to meet its obligations, one of the only major polluters to do so. It appears NZ will be, once again, unable to meet its commitments and be billions in the hole for it.
Glad you admitted you cherry picked data.
Like I said, at the time of writing, it looked like global coal consumption was accelerating at a parabolic rate. At that rate of consumption, 8.5 was plausible.
You are giving me links from people now, not in 2011 when RCP8.5 was written. Its easy to look back now and say "Look at the data from 2011 onwards, clearly RCP8.5 isn't plausible" because the world stopped burning at an increasing rate. This isn't a hard concept to comprehend, but I guess the old quote works for your comprehension profile: "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair"
Yes, China is doing very well to meet its obligations, one of the only major polluters to do so. It appears NZ will be, once again, unable to meet its commitments and be billions in the hole for it.
Glad you admitted you cherry picked data.
Like I said, at the time of writing, it looked like global coal consumption was accelerating at a parabolic rate. At that rate of consumption, 8.5 was plausible.
You are giving me links from people now, not in 2011 when RCP8.5 was written. Its easy to look back now and say "Look at the data from 2011 onwards, clearly RCP8.5 isn't plausible" because the world stopped burning at an increasing rate. This isn't a hard concept to comprehend, but I guess the old quote works for your comprehension profile: "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair"
Yes, China is doing very well to meet its obligations, one of the only major polluters to do so. It appears NZ will be, once again, unable to meet its commitments and be billions in the hole for it.
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