On the 15th of May Marian, Ellie and Shane attended UKSIF’s Spring Conference at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh. UKSIF (UK Sustainable Investment & Finance Association) works to bring together the sustainable finance community so that we can all work collaboratively to promote and grow this important industry. With over 300 members (including Ethical Futures), UKSIF are very active in promoting the growth of ethical and sustainable finance. To read more about them and the work that they do, you can visit their website here. 

We won’t give you a blow-by-blow account of the day, but Marian has picked out some interesting points to think about from some of the panels and talks. 

The keynote speech by Bruno Gardner, the Head of Climate Change and Nature at Phoenix Group, highlighted major environmental issues that we have experienced in recent years. Namely, April of this year was the 11th month in a row to be the hottest on record, there have been extreme heat events and there have been record floods in Afghanistan. He also highlighted that temperatures are likely to increase by 2.5-3 degrees as opposed to dropping. He clearly stated the importance of investing sustainably to help battle the climate crisis and help the planet. 

Robin Tayal (Scottish National Investment Bank) and Matthew Clayton (Thrive Renewables) agreed that there are many opportunities for Scotland to be part of renewable energy generation. They believe the transition to renewables can be classed as the second Industrial Revolution. Scotland is in a unique position as we have transferable skills that can be taken from oil and gas generation to renewables. Our oil and gas workers are used to rugged conditions on the rigs, we can use those skills to operate hydro and offshore wind generation. But, to fully benefit from the opportunities available to us, we must ensure local co-operation. We must use local equipment, skills and innovation. Mr. Clayton also stated that we need to throw everything we have at this problem and since renewable energy generation is weather dependent, we need to make European connections and work together. 

We found a fireside chat titled ‘Breaking out of the echo chamber and activating your organisation’ quite interesting although we feel like at Ethical Futures, we’re already covering a lot of the points that speaker Vicky Grenell (Scottish Widows) made. She mentioned that personal and corporate values now need to align and there needs to be more scrutiny about company values. It’s important to ask, ‘Do people trust that you know what you’re talking about?’ and ‘Do people trust you?’. We hope that our work proves the answer to both of those questions is a yes for us. 

The last talk that we thought we should mention was titled ‘Insight into SDR Application’ with Oscar Warwick Thompson (UKSIF) and David Croker (PwC). SDR is due to come into force this summer and the new anti-greenwashing rule will come into force at the end of this month. Mr Croker stated that there is broad support for these initiatives and that people are starting to pay attention to greenwashing. He still believes there is a huge amount of work to be done and that we need to implement education across the board. From distributors through to clients, we need to make sure that we deliver good outcomes and that we ensure understanding. 

All in all, it was a very productive and informative day with a great variety of topics and opinions shared. Marian and Ellie also very much enjoyed the lovely food on offer at lunch and the fantastic view of Salisbury Crags from the terrace!