Climate change mitigation is one of our most significant focus areas in responsible investment, and part of our corporate responsibility programme. We have set environmental targets for our investment activities: we are aiming for a carbon-neutral investment portfolio by 2035. In addition, we are striving towards carbon-neutral real estate investments by 2030. Our long-term target is for our investments to be aligned with the Paris Agreement.
We have devised a climate policy for investments, wherein we determine our action points for mitigating the climate risks of our investment portfolio. In 2021, we supplemented our climate policy with a climate roadmap, setting forth our actions for attaining climate targets.
Veritas climate roadmap
At first, the Veritas climate roadmap pertained to two asset categories: listed equity investments and real estate investments. These asset categories were selected for the first version of the climate roadmap, because there is ample data available on them.
The current climate roadmap encompasses listed equity investments, real estate investments and corporate bonds. As the data coverage improves, we aim to expand the climate roadmap to encompass more asset classes in the future – therefore, this document will evolve with time.
In 2022, we launched a development project to ascertain the availability and coverage of data. We aim to increase the coverage and to add new asset categories under our climate roadmap. The coverage of the data available at the end of 2022 covered approximately 89 per cent of listed equity and corporate bond investments.
Our climate action has progressed according to our climate roadmap and we are even ahead of our climate targets. In listed equity and corporate bond investments, we have managed to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions by 44 per cent in comparison to the level of 2020. The carbon dioxide emissions of properties owned by Veritas have reduced as much as 75 per cent during the same time period.