More and more people want to invest their money with a clear conscience.

But what exactly is to be understood by a green, sustainable financial investment remains as vague as the terms themselves. Attempts at definitions, such as those undertaken by the EU in its taxonomy, lead to disputes, for example whether nuclear power should be categorically ruled out as absolutely green or not.

Daniel Mohr

Editor in Business.

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The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) tries to approach the topic with scientifically based methods.

Its main coordinator and driver is the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), an organization founded in 2000 with the goal of global disclosure of environmental data.

Companies and state institutions are regularly asked for more transparency and clearly measurable, science-based climate goals.

Last year, for example, 38 companies in Germany with a particularly high environmental impact were written to to set corresponding climate targets.

Nine followed the request.

In the USA, 59 of the 362 companies contacted gave themselves such climate targets.

1100 companies contacted

The campaign is the largest of its kind globally. This year, 318 companies, mainly from the financial sector, with assets under management of around $37 trillion are behind it.

“We invest in credible transformation.

To do this, companies must reliably pursue ambitious climate protection goals," says Henrik Pontzen, Head of ESG at the Frankfurt fund company Union Investment.

"Science-based goals are key to a credible transformation."

The financial industry has faced accusations that it likes to wrap its products green so that they sell better, but that the packaging contains quite a hodgepodge of invested companies that is sometimes difficult to distinguish from a non-green-packaged fund.

She then points out that in talks with the invested companies, pressure is put on them to change and pay more attention to environmental, social and good corporate governance (ESG).

The campaign coordinated by the CDP is therefore an opportunity to publicly pressure companies to set themselves science-based climate targets.

Corporations that refuse to do so could be excluded from funds.

If many financial companies followed suit, the financing of such refusers on the capital market would become significantly more expensive.

Nine German financial institutions support the campaign, including the four major fund companies DWS, Allianz Global Investors, Union Investment and Deka.

Concrete goals of BASF and Co asked

CDP has now written to 1,100 companies that have not yet set themselves science-based targets to reduce emissions that are harmful to the environment.

The selection of the companies contacted is based on the MSCI All Country World stock index, which includes 2,900 companies from 47 industrialized and emerging countries.

44 percent of them have not yet set credible climate targets based on the SBTi standards.

Around half of the companies contacted come from the Asia-Pacific region, where climate targets have not yet been widespread.

A quarter come from the United States.

About 10 percent are from Europe, where corporate climate targets are already most widespread.

Five companies from Germany have been written to and asked for specific climate targets: BASF , Hochtief , Infineon , Covestro and Vonovia .

The companies have not only so far refused to meet the campaign's climate goals, they are also not on any of the CDP's A lists and are therefore not among the leading companies in any of the three environmental issues of climate, water and forest.

The campaign has grown by 30 percent compared to the previous year.

In addition to the financial companies, the supporters also include 45 major global corporations, such as BMW, Bayer and Deutsche Telekom from Germany, who hope that the campaign will result in more concrete climate targets for their suppliers.

1,200 large companies have already agreed on climate targets that correspond to the Paris climate agreement and try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

Previous evaluations show that the participating companies reduce their emissions by 8.8 percent per year and thus more than the 4.2 percent that would be necessary for the Paris climate goals.

The companies that have now been contacted are considered very important for global climate efforts.

They stand for 7 gigatons of emissions and thus the output of India and the USA together.

"Science-based climate targets are the most accurate assessment of a company's total emissions impact on the market," says CDP's Laurent Babikian.

"Without them, companies cannot convince investors and customers that they are in the process of transformation."

Investor representatives welcome the initiative, because it makes it clearer who is serious about climate protection and who can be measured transparently.

The financial sector, on the other hand, is under close scrutiny as to how consistently it actually excludes companies from the injection of capital that do not allow their climate transformation to be objectively measured.