Sustainability has taken its place on the dashboard of many of the company’s executives, and the money is to be tracked – especially in the electric vehicle space, if investment trends and research and development commitments are something to follow.
“ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) has become a priority for our industry, not only for the long-term impact of emissions, but also … the quality of the governance issue,” Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida told CNBC Europe’s “Street Signs” on Tuesday.
“And ESG has a significant impact on the way we car manufacturers do business. Of course, in recent decades, the industry has been under considerable pressure from government and society to be more sustainable, but given a more conscious consumer “, Uchida said, determined” more emphasis on areas such as electrification, autonomy and connectivity, which I believe the industry needs to move forward “.
Nissan recently announced its goal of being carbon neutral by 2050 and plans to electrify 100% of its new vehicles offered by the early 2030s. Nissan Leaf all-electric will reach 500,000 units in sales in 2020, a car which the company has been producing since 2010.
The investment in electric vehicles and EV components seems to be on track. California-based investment firm Wedbush believes EV shares could rise as much as 50% this year, stressing that there is room for more than just Tesla. And in 2020, market research firm Fortune Business Insights valued the EV industry at about $ 250 billion.
EV components and materials are also set to win. Goldman Sachs, in a February note, highlighted six EV battery specialists with significant growth potential.
“There is a business imperative”
For Mario Greco, CEO of Zurich Insurance and a founding member of CNBC’s ESG Board, there is really no choice but to pursue ESG solutions to climate change.
“There is a business imperative,” Greco told CNBC. “The most important thing is to work on prevention. Insuring climate risk again is expensive and will become more expensive.”
Zurich Insurance has set new climate targets for its investments and operations as it seeks to become a zero-emission net business by 2050.
“We need to transform the industrial sector and transform our societies,” said the CEO. “Insurance can also support this transformation – what insurance cannot do is pay only for the damage of climate change. But the transformation of the industrial sectors and the transformation of the way we live today is something we will live and make happy to continue to push forward. “
Insurance against climate risk will be a major challenge as weather events become more extreme; what is needed in this context is “working to prevent and work to transform these risks into different business models,” Greco said.
But none of this means that fossil fuels will soon be gone; in fact, the demand for fossil fuels will increase significantly in the coming years, as urban populations continue to explode.
To counter this, Greco said: “I think we need to incorporate the cost of carbon into the pricing mechanism – today prices do not affect the final price of any good we buy. We must fully incorporate this, which will accelerate and facilitate the transformation of the oil industries. “
“CNBC’s Sam Shead contributed to this report.”