We were planning to cover our fifth of our five pillars, Integrated Reporting, in this edition of the rCFO Brief. But, we have important news to share: Due to the Delta variant rearing its ugly head, we are moving INTEGRATE21, the only conference dedicated to CFOs moving to regenerative finance, to a virtual-only conference this November. While we will very much miss seeing all of you in person, we have designed the content, keynotes, sessions and speakers and networking opportunities to be fully accessible to virtual attendees. We hope you join us online.
We’ll dive deeper into Integrated Reporting in our next edition of the Brief, but in the meantime, we are pleased to present Mr. Tom Chi in our rCFO podcast. Tom, who will be a speaker at INTEGRATE21, is the Founder and CEO of At One Ventures, an astrophysicist, a TEDster, and was formerly a senior executive with GoogleX. In this podcast, Tom talks about the psychological antecedents to global prosperity and how to move capital into ESG innovation at scale. He also speaks about how the economy is inseparable from the environment.
To learn more about how money actually flows, please join us at the VIRTUALINTEGRATE21 Conference November 8-10.
rCFO Corner
WelcomeMargaret “Peggy” Smyth, Board of Directors of Frontier Communications and the former CFO of National Grid U.S.
Peggy believes the CFO should serve as the "chief transformation officer," especially in the fast-changing energy sector. The business model of one of the world’s largest utilities is shifting to embrace technology and decarbonization with CEO John Pettigrew’s blessing. Passionate about combating climate change, Smyth is chair of the company’s sanctioning committee for all capital projects, and she urges other CFOs to use their "calling card" to go anywhere in their company to influence its direction.
Insights
This Delta Variant update, related to why we moved our conference to virtual, specifically covers statistics in New York. Additionally, This New York Times article states that the Delta Variant has an R-naught (R0) of over 5, which indicates an infection rate that is double that of the original Covid virus. Good Governance and Social Responsibility
IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report. The world’s leading climate scientists recently delivered their starkest warning yet about the deepening climate emergency, with some of the changes already set in motion thought to be “irreversible” for centuries to come. This article shares key takeaways from the report. Investing and Governance
Sustainability (we say regeneration) is theCFO's new best friend. In this article the CEO of the UN Global Compact discusses that a good chief finance officer has always focused on what affects the bottom line. While just a few years ago this wouldn't have included sustainability, today it is a must. Not only are demands growing from all sides for companies to take more action to help secure a better future, but evidence increasingly shows that those who commit to sustainability targets outperform those that do not. Governance and Reporting
The challenge of defining climate finance. Defining green investments is not an exact science. A lack of clarity around what should be classed as a climate-friendly investment has long been an obstacle preventing funding from flowing to green projects. Governance and Reporting
Sustainable finance builds unstoppable momentum.This report from GlobalCapital Markets highlights the strength and importance of sustainability as related to finance. Investing
Explore 5 ways to unlock capital to go into regenerative innovation. Financing
Featured ESG Venture/ Investor
Welcome Top 50 People in ESG. This week, instead of highlighting one person, we want to uplift this report on 50 people making an impactin overall ESG innovation. There are some amazing people on this list, and we would like to point to Laura Palmeiro from Danone and the UN Global Compact, a personal friend of ours. Congrats, Laura!
This report is by ESG Matters, which was founded by Dr. Glenn Frommer, one of the pioneers of sustainability and the environmental movement. Since 2014, ESG Matters has been a creator of platform solutions to meet the needs of sustainable impact investing and green financing. Working closely with listed companies, SMEs, and various growing organizations, ESG Matters aims to address the global market through providing business process outsourcing services, enabling solutions to achieve the relevant SDGs and building resilience to climate change.
Featured ESG Investment
Precision AI: These people, like many others, are squarely set in the middle of environmental innovation in terms of life on land (SDG No. 15.) Precision AI's drone-based computer vision technology enables surgically precise application of herbicide to individual weeds in row crop farming. By spraying only weeds and avoiding the crop, yields can be maintained at a fraction of the chemical cost. Ultimately, the company's vision is to deploy hives of intelligent drones that will automate the crop protection process throughout the entire growing season, optimizing every square inch of farmland on a per-plant basis.
Up & Coming Events
See most of the U.S. environmental finance events in this one place.
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