Law Commons^™

The Role And Relevance Of Investment Treaties In Promoting Renewable Energy Investments, Ladan Mehranvar, Lisa E. Sachs

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Co-authors Ladan Mehranvar and Lisa Sachs discuss the effect of investment treaties as catalysts for critical investments in the energy transition, with a particular focus on the Spanish renewable energy cases. The book chapter, "The Role and Relevance of Investment Treaties in Promoting Renewable Energy Investments," is featured in Investment Arbitration and Climate Change, published by Kluwer Law International B.V.

Investor–State Dispute Settlements: A Hidden Handbrake On Climate Action, Lea Di Salvatore, Lorenzo Cotula, Anirudh Nanda, Chloe Yuqing Wang

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

To achieve the Paris Agreement’s climate goals, states must move away from fossil fuels. But investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) — a system that enables companies to take states to international arbitration — can increase the cost of this transition.

Our research shows that fossil fuel companies have historically secured at least US$82.8 billion in damages and large sums continue to be invested in fossil fuels worldwide. To address this problem, investment governance must be harmonised with global climate goals.

Effective Shareholder Engagement To Address The Food Sector’S Sdg-Related Impacts In Mexico, Nora Mardirossian

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

While investor engagement on environmental and social issues have grown in recent years, they remain limited in Mexico and other emerging markets.

Investors have an opportunity to do more to help address critical SDG-related issues in these contexts through their active ownership efforts. By doing so, they can be more responsible in ensuring respect for human rights, protecting shared systems, and supporting their long-term financial interests. Importantly, they can also ensure they comply with – and support their portfolio companies in complying with – emerging legal frameworks requiring reporting and due diligence on the impacts of their global value chains. …

Turning The Tide: How To Harness The Americas Partnership For Economic Prosperity To Deliver An Isds-Free Americas, Daniel Rangel, Lori Wallach, Ladan Mehranvar, Alvaro Santos, Mario Osorio

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

During the Summit of the Americas in June 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden announced the launch of negotiations for an Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP). The Biden administration hopes this initiative can rebuild relationships with countries in the region by increasing cooperation to address economic development and inequality, climate, and other challenges affecting the entire Western Hemisphere. To fulfill this vision and its associated goals, the participating countries must address the severe challenges posed by the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) regime and its escalating threats to the transition to a post-carbon society and the establishment of resilient public health …

Ghg Accounting For Low-Emissions Branded Steel And Aluminum Products, John Biberman, Perrine Toledano, Chloe Zhou

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Iron, steel, and aluminum products are major sources of GHG emissions, and these emissions have traditionally been hard to abate. As of 2020, the iron and steel and the aluminum industries accounted for 7% and 3% of global GHG emissions respectively. In recent years, demand has increased substantially for “green” iron, steel, and aluminum products which can allow purchasing companies to reduce their reported upstream scope 3 GHG emissions. In response to increased demand, companies in these industries have made an expanding array of green products available to customers.

“GHG Accounting for Low-emissions Branded Steel and Aluminum Products,” draws from …

Circularity In Mineral And Renewable Energy Value Chains: Overview Of Technology, Policy, And Finance Aspects, Perrine Toledano, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Jack Arnold

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

The mineral-intensive global energy transition and the increasing material needs of a growing population will exacerbate mining’s footprint on the planet, under current linear economy conditions. Responsible primary production of minerals and metals needs to be combined with circular economy approaches. CCSI’s report, Circularity in Mineral and Renewable Energy Value Chains: Overview of Technology, Policy, and Finance Aspects, examines existing conditions as well as reforms needed to enable global circularity in the mineral value chains of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and wind turbines, zeroing in on four key materials: aluminum, copper products, silicon, and steel. The project was supported by …

Community Benefit Sharing And Renewable Energy And Green Hydrogen Projects: Policy Guidance For Governments, Perrine Toledano, Chris Albin-Lackey, Maria Diez Andres, Martin Dietrich Brauch

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

The massive and rapid expansion of renewable energy is needed to limit global warming, so its social acceptance must be assured. While not a silver bullet, well-designed and governed benefit-sharing arrangements can lead to beneficial outcomes in ways that speak to affected communities’ needs and interests.

In partnership with the Green Hydrogen Organization and to support the efforts of the Planning for Climate Commission, this report offers high-level guidance to governments that seek to ramp up the development of renewable energy projects, including power generation and grid infrastructure. The report emphasizes that governments need a strong and coherent policy approach …

Provisions On Liability For Decommissioning Upstream Offshore Oil And Gas Infrastructure In Investor–State Contracts, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Esteban F. Fresno Rodríguez, José Luis Gallardo Torres

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Offshore oil and gas operations are inherently hazardous to the environment, posing environmental risks and impacts throughout all stages of the operations: exploration, development, production, and decommissioning. Offshore decommissioning consists of the process of planning, funding, and implementing measures aimed at safely closing, repurposing, or removing the infrastructure and equipment used in the exploration and production of oil and gas in the marine environment, and at mitigating their impacts. It encompasses a series of activities, including the safe plugging and closure of wells, the removal of equipment and pipelines, the repurposing of platforms, the disposal of non-usable materials and potentially …

Carajás Corridor In Brazil: Could An Sea Have Reconciled Shared-Use Infrastructure And Environmental Protection?, Perrine Toledano, Martin Dietrich Brauch

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

The 998km Carajás railway corridor connects the world’s largest iron ore mine, operated by private mining company Vale S.A. (Vale) in Brazil’s northern state of Pará (PA), to the company’s maritime terminal in São Luís, the capital of the northeastern state of Maranhão (MA). Carajás is one of the few integrated railway corridors financed by a mining company that, apart from transporting the iron ore that made the infrastructure investments viable, also transports general cargo and operates passenger services along the corridor. This corridor was born from the Brazilian government’s plans in the mid1950s that foresaw the iron ore reserves …

Antitrust And Sustainability: A Landscape Analysis, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment, Sabin Center For Climate Change Law

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Competition policy and antitrust law are experiencing a global renaissance. New market realities such as digital market gatekeepers, the financialization of firms, highly concentrated markets, a rising labor movement, industrial policy, and trade wars, among others, are radically reshaping how this policy area is understood and applied.

Sustainability concerns have also been a driving force for reconstituting antitrust to meet twenty-first century challenges. It is now widely accepted that competition policy – both its aims and its enforcement – has wider societal impacts beyond competition, including effects on democracy, economic inequality, growth and innovation, racial and gender imbalances, privacy, geopolitical …

Harmonizing Product-Level Ghg Accounting For Steel And Aluminum, John Biberman, Gyunbae Joe, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting methods for steel and aluminum products have begun converging towards common standards within their respective industries in recent years. However, accounting methods for steel products and aluminum products are still not fully comparable with each other. If emissions are measured and allocated differently for these products, then these accounting differences have the potential to influence materials choices for manufacturers concerned about reducing their reported GHG footprint. Companies could therefore be motivated to make a choice between aluminum and steel according to emissions benefits that materialize from differences in accounting frameworks, but which do not actually exist …

Finance For Zero: Redefining Financial-Sector Action To Achieve Global Climate Goals, Lisa E. Sachs, Nora Mardirossian, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

As of 2023, the financial system is woefully misaligned with the world’s climate goals. Six times the current annual level of investment in non-fossil fuel investments is needed between 2023 and 2030 to stay on a 1.5ºC warming pathway. The ratio of clean-energy lending and equity underwriting by banks relative to fossil fuels needs to reach 4 to 1 by 2030, whereas for 1,142 assessed banks, the ratio was between 0.8 and 1 at the end of 2021.

As providers, underwriters, and fiduciaries of trillions of dollars of capital flows annually, financial institutions (FIs) play a critical role in decarbonizing …

Ccsi Submission To The Special Rapporteur On Human Rights And The Environment: Investor-State Dispute Settlement (Isds) Mechanisms And The Right To A Clean, Healthy, And Sustainable Environment, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

CCSI Submission to the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment on investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms and the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, submitted in June 2023.

Transferred Emissions Are Still Emissions: Why Fossil Fuel Asset Sales Need Enhanced Transparency And Carbon Accounting, Jack Arnold, Martin Lockman, Perrine Toledano, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Shraman Sen, Michael Burger

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

In a widely reported trend, the “Oil Supermajors” — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies — are selling off many upstream fossil fuel assets.

Selling these assets to entities that will continue producing and selling the fossil fuel resources does not necessarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the supermajors have used these asset sales to support claims that they are making progress toward reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Emissions reporting frameworks allow companies to conflate the apparent emissions reductions from asset sales with direct reductions from efficiency improvements and asset retirements. In doing so, they hinder the ability …

Enabling A Just Transition: Protecting Human Rights In Renewable Energy Projects: A Briefing For Policymakers, Hansika Agrawal, Laura El-Katiri, Kimathi Muiruri, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

This briefing provides guidance to policy- and decision-makers (hereafter, “policymakers”) on the benefits of and strategies for taking a human rights-based approach to renewable energy policy. It highlights the various impacts of utility-scale renewable energy projects on peoples and communities, associated risks for policymakers, and explains how national, regional, and global policies can help mitigate those impacts and risks. The briefing addresses different agents of policy- and decision-making: Host states, where renewable energy projects are proposed or located; Home states where corporations pursuing renewable energy investments, especially investments abroad, are based; Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) financing renewable energy investments, especially …

Commentary: Nature-Based Insetting: A Harmful Distraction From Corporate Decarbonization, Nora Mardirossian, Jack Arnold

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Carbon offsetting is used worldwide on a massive scale, purportedly to mitigate climate change by capturing atmospheric carbon or by increasing or protecting carbon storage. Yet, in recent years, offsetting has been increasingly criticized as a strategy that can harm Indigenous peoples and local communities, exacerbate land inequality, and, paradoxically, worsen the global climate crisis. “Carbon insetting” has emerged as an alternative approach to offsetting that localizes nature-based solutions projects and other greenhouse gas removal activities within company value chains and has been adopted by major global brands such as Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Burberry. This commentary takes a deep dive …

Ghg Accounting Methods In The Aluminum Industry, John Biberman, Perrine Toledano, Rohini Ram Mohan

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Primary aluminum production is one of the world’s most GHG-intensive industries, and also one where GHG accounting methods have become the most fully developed. GHG reporting for the primary aluminum sector has largely consolidated under the International Aluminium Institute’s (IAI) guidance, although Environment Canada (EC) guidance remains active and Chinese aluminum smelters will soon additionally be required to report their emissions under the China National Development and Reform Commission’s (China NDRC) guidelines, meant to support the development of the Chinese emissions trading system. The IAI method largely follows best GHG accounting practices, but aspects of it can be improved, and …

Net Zero Roadmap For Copper And Nickel, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment, Carbon Trust, Rmi, Payne Institute For Public Policy

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

As we seek to meet the challenges of climate change impacts, many commodities will play an increasing role in decarbonizing economies. There are increasing challenges of addressing the emissions from extraction of these commodities needed to support the zero-carbon transition.

CCSI, in a consortium with Carbon Trust, RMI, and the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines, developed the Net Zero Roadmap to 2050 for Copper and Nickel Value Chains to support the copper and nickel mining sectors in taking collective, coordinated action by providing a clear, approachable, and accepted roadmap for decarbonization.

Our key messages …

Comments On U.S. Funding For Ghg Corporate Reporting Standardization, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment, Sabin Center For Climate Change Law

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (“CCSI”) and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law (“Sabin Center”) are pleased to submit our joint comments on how appropriations made to the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (“IRA”) can best be used to enhance the agency’s efforts to standardize corporate climate commitments, improve transparency around greenhouse gas reductions, and accelerate progress towards decarbonization in the corporate sphere. This Comment focuses on the funding provided to the EPA under Section 60111, on Greenhouse Gas (“GHG”) Reporting.