The increased frequency and intensity of natural disasters costs nearly $250 billion per year; this is a cost increase of about 600 percent since the 1980s. With a global consensus that man-made greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions are overwhelmingly responsible for climate change, we are witnessing mitigation efforts from both governments and corporates across the world on an unprecedented scale. There is also a growing recognition that efforts to tackle climate change must extend beyond the electric power sector to address the more challenging decarbonization of industry, transportation, and buildings. Today, decarbonization is about far more than just renewables, and the breadth and depth of decarbonization investment opportunities are, therefore, growing at speed.

Decarbonization is one of the giga-themes guiding thematic investing across asset classes, in line with the strategic asset allocation described in our Climate Change Strategy. In this paper, we will discuss the signi