CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) has signed on to the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF), becoming Taiwan’s first financial institution to join the industry-led initiative.
The Oct. 8 move, which requires the disclosure of portfolio companies’ greenhouse gas emissions, was a natural next step for CTBC Financial, which has been adopting new inventory measures in the past few years to assess the carbon emissions of its financial products, as well as help its customers with low-carbon transformation.
“Urgent solutions are required to address the risks brought by climate change,” CTBC Financial president Daniel Wu (吳一揆) said in a news release on Monday.
Photo: Lee Chin-hui, Taipei Times
The PCAF is important given that emission calculations serve as the foundation on which enterprises set emission reduction goals, he said.
The financial industry differs from carbon-intensive industries, such as the petrochemical and semiconductor industries, in that its emissions come primarily from portfolio companies, Wu added.
To this end, the PCAF was launched in Europe in 2015 and globally last year, assisting financial institutions in measuring and disclosing the greenhouse gas emissions generated by financial products such as loans and investments.
Its methodology measures the greenhouse gas emissions of portfolio companies or individual investment assets, covering collateral, real-estate loans, power generation project financing, and company equity or debt.
By signing on to the PCAF, CTBC Financial has committed to measuring and disclosing the greenhouse gas emissions of its portfolio companies within three years, while learning and sharing reliable carbon accounting methods and experience.
The Science Based Targets initiative has officially endorsed the PCAF’s methodology as a universal method for calculating and disclosing financial products’ greenhouse gas emissions.
With the addition of CTBC Financial, a total of 80 financial institutions worldwide have joined the PCAF.
The Taiwanese company’s participation in the PCAF is the latest in a series of moves bolstering the sustainability of its operations, guided by the spirit of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement.
In the past two years, CTBC Financial and its subsidiaries have voluntarily joined a raft of international sustainability initiatives.
In April, CTBC Financial signed on to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, while last year, subsidiary CTBC Bank (中國信託銀行), joined the Equator Principles and announced that it would comply with the UN Principles for Responsible Banking.
In addition, subsidiary Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台灣人壽保險) last year adopted the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI).
The insurer in July published the Taiwanese industry’s first PRI report with external assurance. It plans to release its first PSI report by the end of this year.
The pressing need for financial institutions to take greater action against climate change was highlighted earlier this year by the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2020, in which the top five global risks in terms of likelihood were all environmental — for the first time in the report’s 15-year history.
CTBC Financial said that by signing on to the PCAF and maintaining effective inventory of its products’ greenhouse gas emissions, it hopes to expand and use its influence for good.
Alongside these efforts focused on sustainability, the company has prioritized assisting clients with low-carbon transformation, rapidly responding to stakeholder concerns and fulfilling its social responsibilities.
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li
Dutch brewing company Heineken NV on Friday announced an investment of NT$13.5 billion (US$414.62 million) over the next five years in Taiwan. The first multinational brewing company to operate in Taiwan, Heineken made the statement at a ceremony held at its brewery in Pingtung County. It also outlined its efforts to make the brewery “net zero” by 2030. Heineken has been in the Taiwanese market for 20 years, Heineken Taiwan managing director Jeff Wu (吳建甫) said. With strong support from local consumers, the Dutch brewery decided to transition from sales to manufacturing in the country, Wu said. Heineken assumed majority ownership and management rights
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI