The Ceres ICAPs Course: Helping asset owners put climate action plans into practice
The Ceres ICAPs Course: Helping asset owners put climate action plans into practice
Robin Goon and Dr Rory Sullivan
Chronos Sustainability is proud to have collaborated with Ceres and Meketa Investment Group to provide an 8-week Investor Climate Action Plans (ICAPs) Course for US asset owners, through Ceres, the nonprofit organisation working with some of the most influential capital market leaders to address some of the world’s biggest sustainability challenges.
The goal was to provide further guidance to US asset owners on how to create and implement their ICAPs, with delegates from 25 different asset owners taking part.
What are ICAPs?
ICAPs are Investor Climate Action Plans that cover the four interlocking areas of the Investor Agenda: investment, corporate engagement, policy advocacy, and investor disclosure. Governance is a cross-cutting theme across all four areas.
The ICAPs Expectations Ladder
The ICAPs Expectations Ladder summarises the key climate actions investors can take right now in relation to these areas. It is set up as a tier system - with Tier 1 being best practice actions - to encourage dynamic and systematic action on the basis that making a start ensures the fundamentals are in place, and can lead to best practice in time.
During each session, speakers from investor organisations shared their expertise and practical experience relating to the ICAPs Expectations Ladder. These speaker sessions were followed by Q&A and open discussions.
Participants also had the opportunity to discuss their ICAPs through a dedicated office hour system and 1-1 meetings.
1. Investors are using the ICAPs Expectations Ladder as a process, not just an end goal
One of the key takeaways from the course itself was that while the end goal is ICAPs that works for the organisation, the ICAPs Expectations Ladder allows investors to work through a process of strengthening their commitments and actions over time, rather than expecting them to be at Tier 1 (the highest level) immediately.
2. The training course helped participants address barriers to implementing their ICAPs
By providing an overview of the key elements of the ICAPs Expectations Ladder and through having external speakers sharing their experiences, the course provided participants with both the confidence and the practical insights they needed to move forward with their ICAPs.
The office hours option was used by participants to discuss and get advice on issues such as how to build support in their investment teams, and how to engage with their boards and senior management teams.
3. Addressing climate change is an investor’s fiduciary duty
It is an investor’s fiduciary duty to address climate-related risk within their portfolios, as climate change presents the single largest risk to current and future investments. This course was designed to align with this and help investors along the process of designing and implementing their ICAPs and fulfilling this fiduciary duty.
We would like to thank the course convenors, Ceres and Meketa, as well as all of the course participants for making the course such a success.
For further details you can find the Course Page here: https://events.ceres.org/icaps
and the ICAPs Expectations Ladder, here: https://theinvestoragenda.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/expectations-ladder.pdf