Ep79 AI Scrutiny and the Future of Sustainable Impact with Greg Elders, Canbury Insights

How is AI turning climate reporting from a tick‑box task into something useful? Greg Elders from Canbury Insights explains why financial materiality sits back at the heart of climate strategy. He shows how this shift affects investors, regulators and companies.

We examine Europe pushing for real sustainable impact under CSRD, the US facing ESG uncertainty and mixed signals from regulators, and Asian firms juggling ISSB and TCFD standards while dealing with regional economic pressures.

Greg sets out how large language models read annual reports, proxy statements and local media. They link business growth to physical climate risks such as water scarcity. The result is faster insight and sharper scrutiny.

We discuss targeted stewardship, greenwashing risks and the future of global reporting frameworks. Greg also explains why a single global standard remains a “crazy dream”. Automated scrutiny is already changing corporate behaviour, and the pace is only accelerating.

ABOUT GREG: Gregory Elders is Director, North America, at Canbury Insights. He is a recognised sustainable investing expert, leading Canbury’s North American operations and client engagements. He advises investors and companies in navigating evolving sustainability and stewardship expectations, building robust assessment and reporting systems, and aligning sustainability strategies with financial performance.

HOST, PRODUCTION, ARTWORK: Joseph Jacobelli  |  MUSIC: Ep76 onward excerpts from Vivaldi’s La Follia, played by Luca Jacobelli.

Transcript

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Ep79 AI Scrutiny and the Future of Sustainable Impact with Greg Elders, Canbury Insights

[00:00:00] Greg Elders: Europe is starting to realise that just telling companies to report and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, euros, pounds to do it is not actually driving sustainability. So there's been a bit of a pullback and hopefully I think really focusing again, back to the fundamentals of what is important for not only the business but actually driving actual, tangible, sustainable impact.

[00:00:21] Narrator: Welcome to Asia Climate Finance, your front row seat to the policies, investments, and actors shaping climate business and finance across Asia Pacific. Subscribe now so others find this essential guide to Asia's climate economy and note the disclaimers at the end. Now over to the host, analyst, investor, and author Joseph Jacobelli.

[00:00:43] Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, wherever you may be listening. Welcome to episode 79 of Asia Climate Finance. Today I sit down with sustainability and stewardship expert Greg Elders of Canbury Insights. We explore how climate reporting, investor security, and corporate accountability continue to evolve across global markets.

[00:01:07] These forces are absolutely critical because they determine how risk is priced, capital is allocated and companies are held accountable for long-term performance. We also examine how AI is reshaping sustainability analysis, why financial materiality is returning to the centre of climate strategy and how companies in Asia navigate different regulatory expectations between the US and Europe. The conversation also looks at greenwashing risks, physical climate impacts, and what meaningful stewardship really looks like in practice.

As always, for comments, questions, and ideas, our email is at the top of the show notes. Enjoy show.

[00:01:51] Joseph Jacobelli: Hello, Greg. How are you today? I know you're in New York, near New York, so you must be freezing over there.

[00:01:58] Greg Elders: It's a little bit chilly here. I'm doing well.

[00:02:00] Joseph Jacobelli: Good.

[00:02:00] Greg Elders: Good to be here.

[00:02:01] Joseph Jacobelli: Good. Well, thank you very much for making the time for Asia Climate Finance. I really appreciate it. Maybe we can just dive right into it, Greg, if you don't mind. Now you've got a very deep background in advising investors, corporations, on navigating stewardship and sustainability, right?

[00:02:20] So how has the definition of a robust sustainability system changed since you first started in this space?

[00:02:31] Greg Elders: I first started 20 years ago, so back in the early days it was very basic. So I think robust might be a stretch. But a big change in terms of what companies are looking at in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, water use, social human capital issues, and how that's spread from, I think sort of, a handful of higher impact companies to now basically all companies need a process to monitor.

And I think really what we've seen in the last couple years is that back to fundamental financial basics.

[00:03:04] Joseph Jacobelli: Mm.

[00:03:04] Greg Elders: I think in a lot of ways sustainability became very popular. A lot of people were focused on it, and I think maybe it lost some of that financial edge and for a company, for an investor, at the end of the day, they have to make money. So really understanding the value from different sustainability issues, again, with energy efficiency, employee turnover, really how does that impact your business?

[00:03:27] And I think sort of a robust programme now really considers that, really considers what is the financial value of different issues and really focusing on where a company can find value, right? You can't manage everything necessarily but real, where does it really impact your business? Or if you're an investor, the companies you're investing in.

[00:03:47] Joseph Jacobelli: So you've seen in other, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you've basically seen an evolution particularly over the last, I guess five years relative to last 20.

[00:04:00] Greg Elders: Yeah. I think that there's been a big step change in sort of it was an explosion of growth interest from investors by companies focusing on it.

[00:04:07] And now there's been an ESG backlash, right? In the US. There's been concern of focusing on certain issues and I think even in Europe, right, the regulations had been very robust in terms of EU SFDR, CSRD report everything, spend a fortune doing it.

[00:04:24] And I think Europe is starting to realise that just telling companies to report and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, euros, pounds to do it is not actually driving sustainability. So there's been a bit of a pullback and hopefully I think really focusing again, back to the fundamentals of what is important for not only the business but actually driving actual, tangible, sustainable impact.

[00:04:47] Joseph Jacobelli: Right. And we going to get back into that topic in a minute. But before we do that, I just wanted to talk a little bit about your company Canbury, because it focuses on bridging the gap between raw data and actionable investment assessment. Now for a practitioner in the Asian market specifically, what do you think may be the most significant hurdles you are currently helping your clients overcome when it comes to reporting systems?

And also mention a little bit about Canbury as well, the background of the company for those not familiar with the company.

[00:05:25] Greg Elders: So Canbury Insights sustainability consultancy, using AI tools to do everything faster, better, cheaper, and more effectively. So I used to be, we used to work together, right? At Bloomberg. Yeah. Bloomberg Intelligence.

And so now a lot of the data collection then the analysis, it would take a long time.

[00:05:44] And when we added new corporate governance fields to Bloomberg terminal, it was something like six months. We created the definitions. We had a team in India go create it.

They did it wrong. We'd have to redo it. Did it wrong, redid it, changed something. It'd be like six months. Now we're working with clients to do that in a matter of weeks.

[00:06:02] So we can speed that whole process up, define the framework. Either the investor brings it or we can build it out, run it, see where things go wrong. Rerun it. Rerun it.

And we do that in a few weeks. And so I think it's night and day. Mm-hmm. And I think now one of the things that we do very well using AI tools is to pull together different documents, right?

[00:06:24] You have the annual report, talking about the financials. You have the investor relations material, talking about forward looking goals. Mm-hmm. You have sustainability report, talking about sustainability stuff, proxy statement, talking about the board.

And with AI tools and the platform that we've set up, we can pull all that in and really make those connections.

[00:06:41] So we were working with one investor looking at Samsung. And so in the investor relations materials, they're talking about how they want to expand their memory, how that's going to be a large part of their growth in the sustainability report. Mm. Talking about water scarcity.

And so we can pull those different pieces together and sort of create this set of questionnaires for the investor to use of if you're growing in memory and you're building plants in Texas, Korea with water scarcity challenges, now how is that going to impact you?

[00:07:11] How are you managing that risk? So really trying to connect those dots across documents and then, I think in looking within Asia, particularly for most of our clients in US and Europe, they don't necessarily have the local language skills. The local media, what are they talking about?

[00:07:32] And because AI tools are language agnostic, they can really dig into potentially regulatory filings that are not in English, local media, what are they saying if there's an activist investor involved, is this something they're going to close ranks around locally or do they see it as an opportunity for change?

[00:07:48] And so really, I think that's that opportunity that we're seeing to really understand local context in local language and then translate to simplify that into something that investors, portfolio managers, analysts can then use in their modelling and engagement.

[00:08:04] Joseph Jacobelli: Got it. And going back to the second part of the question, what do you think may be the most significant hurdle that you're currently helping your clients overcome when it comes to reporting systems in Asia in general?

[00:08:16] Greg Elders: So I think there's lots of different regulatory guidelines, requirements everywhere. And so I think a lot of what we're doing helping investors as well as corporates in terms of understanding and meeting those, and even if they don't have to meet them for regulatory requirements, if they fall outside of the framework, 

[00:08:34] but still a lot of companies want to do that, particularly in Asia, to show that they understand and they're responding to global standards. So I think it's really helping monitor and respond to regulatory and also non-regulatory, voluntary initiatives and changes and how those are shifting.

[00:08:51] Joseph Jacobelli: That's great. That's great. No, that's a great background and kind of mini 101 of what Canbury is doing.

[00:09:00] Yeah. Getting into the kind of more core conversation, Greg, if I could, it's about the 2026. So you mentioned earlier that there's a bit of a difference in attitudes when it comes to US, EU, versus Asia when it comes to reporting ESG reporting.

[00:09:19] I'm not sure if we are allowed to use the word ESG anymore. Everybody seems to get away from those three letters. For example, if I look at something that S&P wrote, S&P Global wrote very recently, they suggested that sustainability reporting and regulation may actually become murkier in 2026.

[00:09:39] What are your thoughts about that? Do you agree that we are moving into a period of more confusion rather than more clarity?

[00:09:45] Greg Elders: Well, there's a lot changing, whether it's more or less confusing. I think in some ways, again, necessarily started to study CSRD in Europe had gone too far, requiring too much.

[00:09:58] And in some cases telling companies to report less than they were doing because lesser potentially falling into the double materiality. And so I think companies were very confused about what to do. They spent a lot of money with consultants to basically end up doing the same, slightly changing it.

[00:10:13] Greg Elders: So I think there's a lot of confusion, and I think with some of the rollback deferment there, I think in a lot of ways that might simplify things. Companies can go back to really thinking about what matters for their business. But one of the big things happening in the US, mm-hmm.

[00:10:31] Is if you look at the SEC, right, and how they're regulating proxy statements and shareholder proposals, they've actually come out and said at the end of November, companies themselves are going to police what shareholder proposals go on their ballot and before the SEC would, a company would ask to exclude a proposal and the SEC would say yes or no.

[00:10:54] And now they're stepping away from that.  And I think that is adding some confusion to companies and what we're starting to see, we just published some data recently, early days since end of November, looking at about 20 proxies that have been published since then is that most companies, because they're not getting guidance from the SEC, are just defaulting to letting more proposals through.

[00:11:16] So I think with the regulators stepping back in the US that adds a little bit of confusion. In Europe, maybe it's helpful if it's a little bit less prescriptive and more back to understanding fundamentally what's important for the company.

[00:11:29] Joseph Jacobelli: If climate related regulation does become more fragmented or more opaque this year, next year or whenever, what does that do to the cost of compliance? I'm thinking of especially mid-size firms trying to enter the climate.

[00:11:48] Greg Elders: Yeah. So again, I think in some ways having fewer regulations might be easier. And again, companies instead of having to follow this very formulaic cover every point of a law, they can go back again to those basics of how climate change is going to impact them. And I think now there's the flip side where a lot of companies, particularly the US a couple years ago would do a TCFD, right?

[00:12:11] The task force and climate related financial disclosure, light disclosure, right? There's a voluntary guideline. Companies would do a one page, two page kind of disclosure. Mm-hmm. Which didn't say very much.

And most investors were happy with that, right, just sort of literally tick a box.

[00:12:26] They use the word TCFD, we're done. And so, again, I think it's, yeah, it's really incumbent on companies to show what the climate risks are for them and how they're addressing it. And I think investors can get more sophisticated with analysing it.

Again, companies put out these reports, if you look at oil and gas company, it could be a hundred pages, others, it could be a couple of pages.

[00:12:48] And with AI tools, right, we're working with investor clients to really parse through that, understand what are the risks the company sees, how are they responding, so one of the things that we did off the back of in California, right? There was regulation at the end of 2025 any company over a certain size operating California had to basically provide a TCFD report.

[00:13:12] Now that law was stayed by the court as being appealed, so it never quite went into effect. But one of the things that we did is we looked at all Russell 1000 companies, how are they, do they meet TCFD requirements? For the vast majority of companies, they did not, basically every company would leave something out.

[00:13:32] And again, part of what the California law was unique is it said you have to disclose against every framework TCFD guidance item or explain why not. And most people wouldn't do that, right? They just ignore if it's not relevant.

And obviously I think that in a lot of ways made companies really show that they're

[00:13:49] thinking about it. And I think that's one of the things that we would recommend, even if you don't have to do it by law, is show that you really understand and you're not just ignoring it because that's a tough question, but you're actually thinking about how it impacts your business.

[00:14:02] Joseph Jacobelli: Mm Greg, at the very beginning you mentioned AI and you recently had a webinar on AI and reporting that I actually listened to. Given that AI advancements are accelerating rapidly, are you seeing AI as a tool that generally simplifies climate reporting or is it just creating a larger volume of data that investors then struggle to verify?

[00:14:31] Greg Elders: To that point we've created the framework TCFD and we can take an investor's portfolio, we'll collect all the TCFD reports and sustainability reports, whatever from those portfolio companies.

[00:14:45] We can run it and then we can see what the companies are saying. And not just a simply yes no, do they say it, but how are they addressing it? And then, does this sound like a sufficient answer?

Are they addressing the business risk? Do they understand it? And so that's the thing I think really going beyond those simple yes no, or 232 metric tons of CO2, it's really trying to think about the business.

[00:15:05] And large language models are extremely good at it. And but you have to tell it what to assess. And I think one of the things that we see is often people will ask ChatGPT, is this company sustainable?

And they'll dump the sustainability report in it, and they'll come back and say, yes, no company says we are sustainable.

[00:15:21] But you really have to create the framework. And that's one of the things that we spend a lot of time doing is really what are you assessing? How are you assessing it?

What is a good, a medium, a bad answer? And I think once you get that working right, it's very easy to run that at scale.

[00:15:37] Again, we looked at the whole Russell 1000 in the US. And so, yeah, so I think sort of … And then the other piece of on the reporting side, the AI tools are getting better every day.

So we've been working with some clients on physical risk. So we could take companies in their portfolio, we would use AI tools to figure out where are all the locations for those companies.

[00:16:02] Where are their sites, is it a warehouse, a manufacturing facility, data centre? Figure out the latitude, longitude using AI tools. And then we can run it through things like FEMA, National Hazard Index to look at wildfire risk flooding, that kind of stuff, other data sets, and then very quickly build out that picture of potential risks.

[00:16:22] And so we're working with one client, we started last summer working on it and then Gemini had their update was November or so, and literally overnight running the same analysis was so much richer and deeper the next day.

And so these models, AI models keep getting better. And so we at Canbury Insights we're using the off the shelf, Gemini, Claude, that kind of thing, right?

[00:16:46] Now there's all these billions of dollars going into these models. So if I talk to them correctly, create their framework, do it at scale, as they get better, the analysis, the insight gets better.

[00:16:57] Joseph Jacobelli: Right? But one thing I want to emphasise is correct. I mean, the AI tool is only going to be as good as the prompt, and when you've got a prompt called Greg, who's been looking at this for 20 years, it's different from having a prompt like Joseph who has not been looking at this for 20 years. So there, the human factor is still quite important.

[00:17:21] Greg Elders: Correct? Correct. So

[00:17:22] Joseph Jacobelli: it's, we're not just talking, everything is automated and everything is, it's the framework

[00:17:25] Greg Elders: testing it. Again, we run it, we make sure it works and we'll have a few rounds to do it. But then again, it's then flagging the issues for the human to dive into. Right.

So the AI can make those connections.

[00:17:37] Say, now this is a high risk. And then a little alarm bell goes off and go, human being dig into this. Is this something real?

And yeah. And so I think that's really the advantage of AI tools is you don't have to spend so much time on the manual data collection gluing together really quickly pull different documents, data sets together, create that analysis and then a human being can dig into.

[00:18:02] And so now is this a real risk? Is the company mitigating this? Is this really significant to their financials?

[00:18:07] Joseph Jacobelli: Right. One last question, Greg, on something related to AI. AI is transforming stewardship from manual trust-based reviews to automated evidence-based scrutiny. From a stewardship perspective, how is AI changing the way investors actually analyse the sustainability claims made by companies?

[00:18:30] Greg Elders: We'll create a framework and one of the things that we do, we could take a company's all their different documents and look at them all together, is a company talking about something like carbon offsets in the same way, flag if there's potential risk in how they're using their language, look at different UK or whatnot, guidelines, so we can very easily flag that.

[00:18:50] Potential greenwashing risk and really allow both the companies and then as investors to dig into those claims to understand potential issues.

[00:19:00] Joseph Jacobelli: Got it. Got it. Shifting to some questions related to regulation differences in regulation that we kind of mentioned earlier framework, et cetera. Specifically let's look at US versus Europe. I think we are seeing in at least in recent quarters a widening gap between the US approach to ESG and the and EU's rigorous corporate sustainability reporting directive or CSRD requirements.

[00:19:30] Greg Elders: A lot of people have scrubbed these words to try to be more neutral, if you will.

[00:19:35] Hmm. And it's challenging. I think it's been challenging for companies and for investors to be able to have that language for those different groups. I mean, I think one of the things that we've definitely seen, right, is some European pension funds moving away from US asset managers who are not doing enough on what some people call ESG.

[00:19:56] And investors are trying to respond to that and so I think it does create that challenge of how do you navigate these different worlds? And I'm not sure people really figured it out. I think some people might be retrenching and saying maybe Europe is too hard, or maybe to set things up differently if you're in the US.

[00:20:12] So it is a challenge. And I think, again, going back to that, what is financially material, which US investors are going back and saying that we're focused on financial materiality. And again, I think some of that was lost.

So I think you can connect the dots between human capital, employee retention between energy efficiency, right? How does this impact the business? What are the financial implications?

So I think there really is that opportunity to go back to those fundamentals and think about what is important to your company.

[00:20:40] Joseph Jacobelli: I mean, just one side comment here about the whole ESG controversy or language controversy. One thing that I really don't get is people are saying, oh, ESG is, well you know all the negative things that people say about these three words, but if I'm an investor, me Joseph Jacobelli I'm actually, I actually do invest and I do care about the potential environmental liabilities of a company that I invest into, whether I'm buying its equities or its bonds, the social side is a little bit more difficult to assess.

It's always been I'm sure you agree with that. So let's put that on the side. And then you've got governance. I mean, a company that is a bit of a Ponzi scheme is not going to be a very good investment.

[00:21:24] So you do want to have good governance. So whether you like the words or not, as an investor, you've got a fiduciary duty to make sure that the company actually follow those things. I mean, I'm sure I'm preaching the convert, but I just find it really strange that all of a sudden people say, oh, no, no, we don't care about the E, we don't care about the S, and we don't care about the G.

So I mean, on the social side, I mean, a very blatant example would be you go and build a copper mine and destroy the village. And then people end up without a home.

And then that comes back to you after a few years, and you've got millions and millions of billions of dollars in liabilities.

[00:22:06] So anyway, just I just wanted to make that point on the side.

[00:22:10] Greg Elders: Yes, I think you are preaching to the choir, to the converted, the E, the S, the G, they matter. But I think it's, you don't have to use those words to still talk about how it's important to your business and if a company's not disclosing it, how that's potential blind spot.

Mm-hmm. And so, yeah, so I think people have gotten, some people in the US have gotten hung up on the acronyms. But yes, fundamentally it's a business issue.

And I think reason it's become, since I started 20 years ago, so much more important is the regulations have changed as the risk of climate change has changed.

[00:22:46] Prices of energy have gone up, and to your point, social licence, operate, looking at safety, that kind of stuff, all those things are more financially relevant now.

And so, yeah, so it's fundamentally part of thinking about a company. And I think the problem with it, right, sometimes it's very hard to put a dollar value on it.

[00:23:02] You can talk about buying kilowatt hours and how many dollars it costs to do that. But some of these issues become more challenging. Are you going to pay for carbon emissions in the future? What's the impact of having higher safety accident rate?

Right, some of these things, and governance especially, governance is not a problem until it blows up in your face. So how do you put a value on some of these risks?

And so I think that's where smart investors can come in and think what is the risk premium, what's the multiple I'm going to have to put on a company with less good governance?

[00:23:36] And I think in Asia, you see that, right? Yes. There's a lot of companies and markets where earnings multiples are smaller because of governance concerns.

[00:23:47] Joseph Jacobelli: Yeah, I know absolutely. I mean, we, you see it on, you see it in Asia quite a bit ranging from places like even Japan and Korea.

[00:23:57] Talking about Asia and the Asian perspective, Asia often find itself caught between Western reporting standards and regional economic realities. Where do you see the most progress in Asian frameworks? Is it alignment with global rules or developing let's call it tailormade or customised local solutions?

[00:24:21] Greg Elders: So I think right, there's a lot coming out of Taiwan, other markets and I think with ISSB, with the international standards come from IFRS, I think trying to get behind that is probably helpful. It makes it easier rather than having your own right, every country has their own rules.

[00:24:40] No one quite understands what's good, what's bad. So I think getting behind global standards is probably best.

But again, what does that actually mean? How's it implemented? As much as possible, if you're reporting similar to what other companies are reporting, it makes it easier for investors to understand.

[00:24:58] And again, so maybe that means meeting local guidelines and thinking about what international standards are.

[00:25:05] Joseph Jacobelli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, the analogy I always like to use is writing something in square feet and miles for our European audience only understands metres and square metres and kilometres.

[00:25:19] So yeah, the language kind of is quite important, but it's also been very interesting that places that people do not expect, like China not long ago, issued its own climate reporting guidelines, which I believe, and again, I'm not the expert, you are, are not too far away from at least European standards.

[00:25:38] Greg Elders: Yeah. And I think it's a, it is a question of how companies are going to actually use it, the disclosure around it. But yeah, I think we've seen a lot of reporting guidelines come out of China, come out of Asia and it's like having confidence there's full disclosure behind it, that there's enough information, nothing's being hidden.

[00:25:57] Totally.

[00:25:58] Joseph Jacobelli: Because if it's hidden, then it's a risk to investors. So investors should care. Yes.

[00:26:01] Talking about investors now, stewardship is moving beyond simple voting. How are investors today using sustainability data to actually drive operational changes within the companies they own?

[00:26:16] Greg Elders: And so I think this has been going on for years of trying to understand, right, potential risk, is a company not talking about climate risk, how it may impact their business. And I think the evolution we're started seeing now is much more pointed questions as opposed to report your carbon emissions, discuss talent issues.

[00:26:36] It's much more targeted of disclose how this is going to be a potential financial risk. How are you looking at physical risk? I think actually to dig into the physical risk, this has a real cost.

Companies are starting to see the real costs of wildfires, floods, that kind of thing, stronger storms.

[00:26:57] And so companies are realising costs, investors are realising it. And so, again, it allows for much more targeted conversations in terms of, tell me what the financial risk is and how you are mitigating it.

[00:27:09] Joseph Jacobelli: Yeah, it's really sad that you need an extreme weather event that causes billions of dollars of damage and kills people for people to actually wake up and say, oh yeah, maybe we should be doing something about it.

[00:27:19] But talking about financial materiality, bit of a tough question I got to give you at least one tough question.

Greg Elders: Go for it.

[00:27:27] Joseph Jacobelli: Just one quick, tough question. You often speak about aligning sustainability with financial performance. And in 2026, which climate related metric do you think has the strongest direct link to a company share price or credit rating?

[00:27:45] Greg Elders: Thinking about the metrics. So I think it's that forward looking business strategy, so it isn't necessarily a metric. But it's what are you doing if you're selling cars in terms of electric vehicle transition?

If you're a utility, what are you doing to invest in non-fossil fuel generation? And that's not a simple answer, right?

[00:28:05] No. There's been, EVs have struggled of late, regulatory changes and whatnot. So the answer was a couple years ago, all EVs all the time.

Companies are rethinking that. And I think with utilities, right, there's such a build out, at least in particularly the US, everyone wants more energy, electricity for data centres.

[00:28:25] And you see in all the above, it's more nuclear, more natural gas, more renewables, batteries. And so it's really thinking about what the business strategy is.

So I'm not sure the one metric of, but what are the issues and how is that actually impacting your business strategy.

[00:28:45] Joseph Jacobelli: Got it, got it.

[00:28:47] Moving on to Outlook, so you can get you’re the dusty crystal ball out of your desk and kind of look looking forward over the next five, 10 or even beyond years from a global perspective, are we witnessing the end of the dream of a single global standard for sustainability that does the future belong to a multi-regional fragmented approach?

[00:29:10] What's your thinking on that?

[00:29:12] Greg Elders: I think it was always a crazy dream to think that you would have one standard. Right, places are different. Companies are different.

And so one of the things with the SASB Sustainable Accounting Standards Board standards, right, it was by sector and it had a US bias.

[00:29:29] And now trying to make it international with ISSB, but it always needs to have a local context. I mean, governance has a local context. Environmental social issues are going to have a local context and some things like carbon emissions lend themselves to global.

But again, they're going to be regulated differently in different markets.

[00:29:48] Water is hyperlocal. So yeah, I don't think we're ever going to have a single set of standards. Maybe it's a little bit more coalescing around what's important, what's financial material, how to talk about that financial materiality. But there is my prediction, there's never going to be a single standard.

[00:30:06] Joseph Jacobelli: Mm mm-hmm.

[00:30:09] Greg Elders: I should probably go into a betting market and put that down. Will there ever be a single standard in five years?

[00:30:15] Joseph Jacobelli: Unfortunately, I think most people would agree with you, but oh, okay. But you never know. You never,

[00:30:20] Greg Elders: If the odds are there, I'll take the other side, but

[00:30:21] Joseph Jacobelli: Finally, if the world does stay fragmented, what is the one piece of advice that you would give an Asian fund manager, such as myself, for example, trying to build a future proof reporting system today?

[00:30:38] Greg Elders: Future proof. It's always going to evolve. So you always have to understand what is the rules now, what's the direction of travel? And again, I think just back to the fundamental, basic of what is driving the business or what are the sustainability metrics and impacts for the businesses you're investing in.

[00:31:00] And really think about and report that out. And some of that's, it's not a simple metric. It's not, again, tons of CO2 that doesn't tell you anything. Right.

It's actually, so I remember again, back in the olden days when I was at Trucost. Now S&P Trucost, we did carbon footprints of asset manager funds and there was an environmental fund, and it had a ridiculously high, it was the highest carbon footprint in the data set we did above any fund.

[00:31:30] And the reason was they were investing in Drax, right? So that's a single coal-fired power plant in the north of the UK. And so, and they had this strategy of converting to biomass and the environmental portfolio manager of the fund was, I like this business strategy, even though it's high carbon now, looks terrible in a carbon footprint, they're going to transition.

[00:31:51] And there's been a lot of issues back and forth with Drax as it's transitioned because the regulations have changed questions on the mm-hmm, the benefit of biomass. But that's the kind of thing where the single metric doesn't necessarily tell you what is the investment thesis?

[00:32:03] And obviously one can disagree with the investment thesis but really sort of understanding how sustainability is going to impact it. And I do think any investment strategy built around sort of regulations incentives is extremely challenged. Right.

And it's been demonstrated time and time again, EV credits disappear, renewable electricity credits and such incentives disappear.

[00:32:26] Joseph Jacobelli: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's really great. I just learnt so much.

[00:32:32] Greg Elders: You're quickly rejigging your portfolio. You're buying and selling.

[00:32:37] Joseph Jacobelli: Yes. Yes. Just give me a couple of minutes. I'll put you on hold. Just kidding.

[00:32:41] On a kind of more light-hearted side of the conversation, and that's the final part of the discussion today.

[00:32:49] Do you have any personal recommendations when it comes to books, reports, movies, documentaries, or any kind of recommendations for listeners?

[00:33:00] Greg Elders: In terms of recommendations. So I think one of the things that I've really enjoyed, so in the US at least, there's this app, Libby.

[00:33:06] And so it gives you access to libraries so local library can get an e-book. And so I've just been reading through everything. And I think it's been really opportunity

Usually I read boring history books and such, and so it's the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution or American Independence this year. So there's been a lot on that.

And enjoying a series by Rick Atkinson. And so he has a three book trilogy looking at the American Revolution and sort of the first book, it was sort of the excitement of revolution and sort of setbacks and whatever. But then the problem is the Revolutionary War went on for, what, seven, eight years.

So it was a lot of slow times. So I'm in the second book now Fade of the Day. And it's a little bit longer, little bit slower waiting for, but it does have a happy ending, at least if you're in the US.

[00:33:55] Joseph Jacobelli: Mm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. At least until 2026.

[00:33:59] Greg Elders: Well,

[00:34:01] Joseph Jacobelli: Yes. 

Greg Elders: That's a different trilogy.

[00:34:03] Joseph Jacobelli: and at Asia Climate Financewe don’t talk about geopolitics or political issues because it's not part of my core expertise.

[00:34:12] Greg, I really want to thank you. You made a subject which is for a lot of people, a little bit opaque very clear. I thought the angles on AI's contribution were really great. And thank you so much for participating in the Asia Climate Finance Podcast.

[00:34:30] Greg Elders: It was all your good questions; it brings it up. Thank you for the opportunity.

[00:34:34] Joseph Jacobelli: Thank you, Greg. Thank you.

[00:34:36] Greg Elders: Take care.

[00:34:37] Narrator: Please note that the Asia Climate Finance Podcast is provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Any information discussed should not be relied upon for making investment decisions. Listeners should always seek advice from a suitably qualified and authorised investment professional, the views and opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of their current or former employers or of the podcast host or producers.