Climate Bonds Initiative CEO talks sustainable finance
All Things Sustainable (formerly ESG Insider)
Release Date: 12/18/2024
All Things Sustainable (formerly ESG Insider)
The United Nations’ annual World Water Day observance took place on March 22, with a focus on supporting the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 6: water and sanitation for all by 2030. In this episode of the All Things Sustainable podcast, we dive into the water stewardship practices at Amazon, one of the world’s largest companies with a market cap of more than $2 trillion dollars. Amazon Water Sustainability Lead Will Hewes outlines the company's approach to water in the communities it serves and across Amazon's business lines, which range from e-commerce to online...
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In recent episodes of the All Things Sustainable podcast, we’ve interviewed some of the world’s biggest financial and technology companies about how they’re approaching sustainability and the energy transition. But how is the energy industry thinking about these topics — including the world’s largest fossil fuel companies? To answer that question, we traveled to Houston, Texas, to cover the annual CERAWeek conference hosted by S&P Global — an event informally known as the ‘Super Bowl’ of the energy industry. In today’s episode we sit down on the sidelines of...
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In this episode of the All Things Sustainable podcast, we're unpacking new proposals to simplify sustainability reporting in Europe. Released in February 2025, the European Commission's Omnibus Simplification Package would drastically reduce the number of companies subject to corporate sustainability reporting requirements in a bid to slash red tape, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The proposals include measures to simplify the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the EU...
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Welcome to the Terra Carta Series of the All Things Sustainable podcast, a collaboration with the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI). Throughout 2025, we’ll be interviewing SMI member CEOs from around the world and across industries about how they’re approaching sustainability challenges and opportunities. The SMI is a network of over 250 global CEOs across finance and industry. It facilitates private sector diplomacy with the ambition of making sustainability the driving force of global markets and value creation. S&P Global is a proud SMI member. ...
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This week, the All Things Sustainable podcast delves into the intersection of climate change and gender equality with Rachel Vestergaard, Founder and CEO of Empower Co. Empower Co. is a brokerage firm that is building a global voluntary market for women’s empowerment as measured by the W+ Standard, which is hosted by the S&P Global Commodity Insights Environmental Registry. Studies have showed that the climate crisis is not gender neutral, with women and girls experiencing the greatest impacts of climate change. As we approach International Women's Day on March 8,...
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This week, the All Things Sustainable podcast (formerly ESG Insider) reached 2 million downloads. Today, we bring you an interview with the largest bank in the US. We sit down with Brian DiMarino, Managing Director and Deputy Director of Global Sustainability, Strategy and Operations at JPMorganChase. He explains how the bank is navigating a challenging sustainability landscape, including its decision to exit the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, and why he believes it’s time for a “rebrand” of some of the language companies use when communicating about sustainability topics. At...
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Today marks the anniversary of our podcast launch in 2019. Since then, we’ve released more than 250 episodes, and the show has been downloaded nearly 2 million times around the globe. We’re celebrating these milestones and the evolution of the ESG Insider podcast by launching a new name: the All Things Sustainable podcast. Our new name reflects an idea we’ve heard repeatedly from guests over the past six seasons: Solutions to big sustainability challenges like climate change, nature and biodiversity loss and achieving a just and equitable transition require action from all...
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In this episode of the ESG Insider podcast we explore climate change and its implications for property insurance through the lens of the wildfires in Los Angeles. The fires that broke out in LA in January killed at least 29 people and destroyed or damaged thousands of structures. Early estimates from AccuWeather put the total damage and economic losses at more than $250 billion. “Climate change is not the only culprit here, but it is an accentuating factor that made this event and other events more severe than they would have been otherwise,” says Terry Thompson, Chief...
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The UN estimates that the annual financing gap for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is in the trillions of dollars. The Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance estimates developing countries’ investment needs to address climate change and the energy transition at $3.2 trillion a year by 2035, excluding China. Closing these gaps will require private sector investment, and in this episode of the ESG Insider podcast we’re talking with Sebnem Sener, the Head of Private Finance for the SDGs at the UN Development Programme (UNDP) Sustainable Finance...
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In this episode of the ESG Insider podcast, we take a deep dive into a new report that found 2024 was the warmest year on record. The report is from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, which is the EU's Earth Observation Program and provides information about climate across the world. The report found that average global temperatures for the year were more than 1.5 degrees C above preindustrial levels — the global warming limit set in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. "Even if at some point, we overshoot this target, I think we need to continue to...
info_outlineIn recent episodes of the ESG Insider podcast we’ve been covering some of the big outcomes from COP29, the UN’s climate change conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. This was known as the "finance COP,” and today we’re back with another bonus episode looking at how climate finance has changed over time.
We sit down on the sidelines of COP29 with Sean Kidney, CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative, a nonprofit that works to mobilize global capital for climate action. He discusses his key takeaways from COP29, the dramatic change he is seeing in sustainable debt markets and the outlook for the energy transition in 2025.
“I launched the Climate Bonds Initiative at the 2009 Copenhagen COP, where things got pretty grim,” Sean says. “I look now at the change of sentiment ... most of the conversations I'm involved in — with finance, with development banks, with governments — are all about HOW to do it, not IF.”
Listen to our previous coverage of COP29:
UN official says credibility of climate COPs at stake heading into 2025: https://www.spglobal.com/esg/podcasts/un-official-says-credibility-of-climate-cops-at-stake-heading-into-2025
How the private sector showed up at COP29: https://www.spglobal.com/esg/podcasts/how-the-private-sector-showed-up-at-cop29
How the insurance industry is tackling climate risk: https://www.spglobal.com/esg/podcasts/how-the-insurance-industry-is-tackling-climate-risk
After COP29, what’s next for carbon markets: https://www.spglobal.com/esg/podcasts/after-cop29-what-s-next-for-carbon-markets
This piece was published by S&P Global Sustainable1, a part of S&P Global.
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