Unwritten, the climate risk platform for private markets, hosted The Politics of Climate Risk with Claire O'Neill (former UK Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth). As minister, she brought forward the legislation committing the UK to net zero by 2050. Participants included climate finance leaders from banking, ESG leaders from public and private markets, standard setters and regulators. Claire O’Neill’s opening address was followed by a Q&A which examined why the politics of climate risk are becoming as contentious as the politics of mitigation.

Key takeaways

1. Climate policy is moving from reporting to action. Claire O'Neill opened by arguing that the focus for governments, investors and businesses is shifting from disclosing climate risk to acting on it.
2. 'Climate realism' is becoming the frame for climate policy. The discussion set out the case for climate realism as the basis for policy and business decisions on climate.
3. Climate risk is not automatically easier to sell politically than climate change. Building on the speaker’s unrivalled insight, the discussion was framed around the political challenges of making climate risk more palatable than climate change itself.
4. Businesses need to act on climate risk despite the ESG backlash. The group discussed why companies and investors cannot wait for the political climate to settle before managing climate risk.

What the politics of climate risk mean for investors

Climate policy will keep shifting with elections, energy prices and public opinion, and those shifts are themselves a source of transition risk for portfolios. For private market investors, the practical response is to test how holdings perform under different policy pathways, and manage the physical exposures that will materialise under any of them. Treating climate risk as a financial discipline rather than a political position is what allows that work to continue through each change in direction.

About Unwritten

Unwritten is a London-based climate risk platform for private markets. Its platform, Unwritten AI, helps private equity and infrastructure investors assess physical, transition and nature risk at fund, portfolio company and site level.

The platform uses artificial intelligence to automate complex climate risk data workflows and drive value-creation opportunities for private markets investors, asset managers and corporate risk leaders. Unwritten helps leaders move beyond minimum compliance to actively manage risk and build operational resilience that creates value at the PortCo level.