💸🔦 This week’s corporate CDR buyer spotlight: UBS 💸🔦

UBS is a leading global financial services firm headquartered in Switzerland. Given their status as the largest wealth management bank in the world, with invested financial assets of 3,607 billion Swiss francs in 2019, their climate commitments and carbon dioxide removal (#CDR) investments are worth paying attention to.

What are UBS’s climate commitments?

🎯 UBS is committed to achieving #netzero greenhouse gas emissions across all aspects of its business by 2050, with targets set for 2025, 2030, and 2035. For example, UBS aims to reduce absolute financed emissions associated with lending to fossil fuels by 71% by 2030 (compared to 2020 levels).

🌱 UBS provides its investing clients with #sustainable and impact-focused choices, integrating sustainability factors into its investment processes and engaging with companies on sustainability objectives.

🔎 UBS emphasises transparency and accountability in its environmental management, sourcing 100% #renewable electricity globally since 2020 and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 79% against its 2004 baseline.

What is UBS’s carbon dioxide removal (#CDR) buyer strategy?

🇨🇭In 2022, UBS formed long-term collaborations with two Swiss companies to advance CDR technologies. Climeworks specialises in direct air capture (#DAC) and storage of CO2 and neustark specialises in the petrification of atmospheric CO2 in recycled concrete.

☁️UBS has already bought 29, 500 tonnes of mineralisation CDR from neustark. Over the next 13 years, the collaborations aim to remove 39,500 tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere.

🤝UBS is another founding member of #NextGen, a partnership between South Pole and the Mitsubishi Corporation which aims to promote the market for high-quality, certified carbon removals from technological projects.

aUBS’s climate commitments and procurement of CDR show that financial services providers can play a key role in reshaping the activities of their investing clients. I look forward to seeing the evaluation of their climate targets, starting as early as 2025.

📢Shoutout to the people at UBS who are shaping the company’s climate commitments, including: Sergio P. Ermotti, Michael Baldinger, Sabine Keller-Busse, Suni Harford, Christine Gugolz Kiefer.

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