Investor Decarbonisation Initiative
Harnessing investor power to accelerate corporate climate action.
Climate change poses serious risks to life as we know it. The evidence is clear: failing to decarbonise our global economy will see irreversible impacts for our natural world, and everything that calls it home – including us.
We have the tools to fix this crisis, but with companies responsible for a huge portion of global emissions we will not achieve this without corporate action. While some forward-looking businesses recognise the need to act, many companies are vastly unprepared. Others block action at every turn. Investors have a huge role to play in shaping both the pace and scale of this transition. The Investor Decarbonisation Initiative aims to bring together investors to accelerate corporate action on climate change in key battleground sectors. Building on previous success securing corporate commitments across the global economy, it's now focusing its efforts on high-carbon sectors, built environment and chemicals.
The Investor Decarbonisation Initiative helps investors:
Collaborate
Coalition members can amplify their influence over companies through collective engagements. These can push companies to set ambitious decarbonisation goals as well as hold them accountable to those targets.
Learn
Using detailed research and topical briefings, investors can learn about the credibility of different decarbonisation pathways, enabling them to better assess corporate transition plans.
Advocate
Through company AGMs, letters and roundtables, investors can engage companies to ensure that decarbonisation remains at the top of their agenda.
The IDI was established in 2015 to harness investors' power to accelerate corporate action to decarbonise in line with the Paris Agreement.
Between 2015 and 2021, IDI members achieved considerable success in securing new corporate commitments from companies across the global economy, including Siemens, GSK and Tesco. These companies agreed to sign up to The Climate Group 100 initiatives, for example, on renewable energy (RE100) and the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi).
Since 2021, ShareAction’s climate work has changed to focus on encouraging ambitious climate transition plans in high carbon sectors, such as the built environment and chemicals sector. This shift reflects ShareAction’s belief that that companies need to move beyond making broad commitments and target-setting, to adopting credible, sector-specific climate transition plans.
Our Current Work on High-Emitting Sectors
Chemical Decarbonisation
It is technically feasible to fully decarbonise the production of chemicals by 2050, and becoming increasingly economically viable. We support investor engagement with chemical companies to ensure the sector decarbonises in alignment with the 1.5 degree Paris goal.
Find out moreBuilt Environment
Emissions from the built environment need to halve by 2030 to align with Paris goals, according to the World Green Buildings Council. We support investors to push for the adoption of high standards of disclosure, target-setting and stewardship on the built environment.
