37%

Share of global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from the construction sector in 2020 — 21 percent from operations and 16 percent from “embodied” construction, defined as the manufacturing and transportation of such products as iron, steel and cement.

Reducing embodied emissions must be a dedicated focus, industry executives indicate in Decarbonizing Construction: Building a Low-Carbon Future, a report by Shell plc and Deloitte. The solutions roadmap is complex, but the panel projects that global construction could reach net zero by 2070. 

“(L)ow-carbon technologies and alternative materials will be key to reducing the sector’s emissions,” Raman Ojha, vice president of Shell Construction and Road, wrote in the report. He added that companies “must play a more active role and demand more low-carbon construction solutions in tenders.”

Bank’s Collapse Puts Emphasis on ‘G’ Component

When discussing environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards and investing, the “E” will be at the forefront as long as climate issues are a critical concern. The diversity and equality fights of recent years have put the “S” in greater focus.

However, the “G” is, in many ways, the glue, even if it’s overlooked by investors and misjudged by fund managers and ratings agencies. 

That lesson was reaffirmed in March with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which was an ESG favorite because of its prodigious lending to renewable energy companies. However, given SVB’s “A” rating and other passing grades on ESG, agencies and fund managers missed the risk lurking in its loan portfolio, which made the bank vulnerable to rising interest rates and other volatility.

“Get the ‘G’ wrong and it undermines everything else,” Paul Clements-Hunt, sustainability director at London-based law firm Mishcon de Reya LLP, told Bloomberg. He added, “For SVB to get a high overall ESG rating based on its tech and clean-tech focus without deep consideration of ‘G’ is just poor analysis.”

Alp Ercil, founder of Hong Kong-based investment firm Asia Research & Capital Management, called SVB’s collapse “a massive governance issue” at a gathering of Wharton Business School alumni in Singapore. “It’s going to be a huge case study that hopefully Wharton will write on the ‘G’ component of ESG,” he said.

Elevating Black Talent in Tech Is a Matter of Investment 

High-profiled layoffs and cutbacks have plagued the U.S. technology sector in recent months, and they likely are exacerbating another nagging issue — diversity. Black employees are underrepresented in the sector, according to research by McKinsey & Company.

Blacks make up 8 percent of technology employees, compared to 12 percent of the overall U.S. workforce. The disparity is starker as one climbs the ladder; just 3 percent of tech executives are Black. Improving those figures could be more challenging, with layoffs hitting diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) positions especially hard.

Such lost opportunities could cost Black households more than US$350 billion in tech job wages by 2030, according to a McKinsey report, How to Close the Black Tech Talent Gap. Reversing this trend requires much more than recruitment and retention, the report states. Increasing diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) educational programs is critical, but only one in five Fortune 100 companies have STEM partnerships at schools in underserved communities, McKinsey researchers found.

The report identifies four other critical investments: “strengthening HBCU partnerships, expanding opportunities for alternatively skilled talent, replacing mentorship with sponsorship, and empowering Black leaders to thrive,” the report states. “Doing so will support the Black technology workforce for generations to come.”