COP26 finished last week and many readers may have lost interest in the issues it discussed long before it closed. There is just so much one can take from the scaremongers of global warming when most of us have more immediate concerns about health and wealth. But there was one announcement by Chancellor Rishi Sunak that could be seriously damaging to your wealth in the next few years.
This was his announcement that the UK will be the world’s first net zero financial centre. This will not just be political gestures but he is proposing the following to quote from his Treasury statement: “Under the proposals, there will be new requirements for UK financial institutions and listed companies to publish net zero transition plans that detail how they will adapt and decarbonise as the UK moves towards to a net zero economy by 2050”.
“To guard against greenwashing, a science-based ‘gold standard’ for transition plans will be drawn up by a new Transition Plan Taskforce, composed of industry and academic leaders, regulators, and civil society groups”.
In other words, this will not be another “greenwashing” exercise but impose specific obligations on companies. The fact that meeting net zero carbon is an impossible task for many companies in any realistic timescale it seems is likely to be ignored. Even attempting to meet that target will impose enormous costs on companies even those who are not big generators of carbon emissions. If you extend it to Scope 3 emissions (those include all indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain) then the reach will affect all sectors of the economy.
This will certainly put the UK in the lead in the attempt to restrict global warming whether you believe it is practical or not. But if such regulations are introduced in the UK one can imagine exactly what will happen as it seems unlikely that other major economies will follow that lead. China, the USA, Russia and India are very unlikely to impose such draconian measures. As many UK listed companies have an international focus they have no great need to be listed in the UK. They could just as easily be listed in the USA or other countries with more friendly or easy-going regulatory frameworks.
You might think this is just an attack on oil/gas and mining companies but it will have a much wider impact in reality. For example, one of the big consumers of oil are ships transporting goods around the world so anyone importing products for sale, such as retailers, would need to persuade the shipping companies to avoid using oil.
One thing is certain. Companies such as BP and Shell may simply consider that it is easier to move their listing to another jurisdiction or accept a bid from a private equity player who does not have concerns about their environmental credentials.
This is what Jeremy Warner had to say in the Daily Telegraph: “However much we might wish it otherwise, oil and gas will long remain our primary source of life enhancing energy. And yet the industry is being driven underground by politicians and regulators too cowed to stand up to the hysteria of the climate change activists. The enemy within is almost as bad as the holier than thou pressures from without; oil company boards, together with those of their bankers, are these days stacked with well meaning do-gooders more focused on bowing to the campaigners than the demands of shareholder value”. If you are a shareholder in BP or Shell (I am not) you may sympathise with such comments.
Such moves of listing may already be evident from the decision of BHP to move to a single listing in Australia rather than the dual listing at present.
Unfortunately with such companies being the bedrock of the dividend paying FTSE-100 companies there are few alternatives for some investors such as big pension funds to choose.
Personally I have been investing in alternative energy generating companies and battery companies because the latest announcements from the Government tell me that the hysteria over achieving net zero is now so widespread that it will have a big impact on the financial world. In addition the Government plans to spend many billions of pounds in financing green initiatives and not just in the UK. We have already contributed £2.5 billion as the biggest donor to Climate Investment Funds. Such funding imposes a heavy burden of taxation which will add to the above woes of companies domiciled in the UK.
The irrationality of the general public over climate change in the UK has no bounds. For the last 30 years the young have been taught in schools an extreme agenda which has also been promoted by the national media, particularly the BBC, and politicians are now pandering to the mood of the public. This scenario is going to make the UK a poor location for investment funds in comparison with other countries. Private investors should surely rebalance their portfolios to have less emphasis on the UK. At least that is the case while the mania continues.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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