scholarly journals The Impact of Climate Change in the Valuation of Production Assets via the IFRS Framework

2019 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Scholten ◽  
Tineke Lambooy ◽  
Remko Renes ◽  
Wim Bartels

Abstract An interesting relatively new development in the field of corporate climate change disclosures is the Task force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The TCFD aims to help identify the information needed by financial stakeholders to appropriately assess and price climate change related risks and opportunities. In its first Report (2016), the TCFD recommends that companies provide climate change related disclosures specifying the impact thereof on their financial performance through mainstream (i. e. public) financial filings. In this paper, we look at the financial accounting standards as an institutional framework, and in particular pose the question to what extent this framework supports companies to disclose how climate change impacts their operations and the value of the production assets. To test to what extent companies make disclosures in relation to climate change, we selected four energy companies and conducted a comparative case study analysis. Our focus is on the valuation of production assets, more specifically, drilling platforms, windmill platforms, heavy equipment and transport means used to support the production, and pipes and cables to transport the energy units produced. Interesting findings were: (i) in all four cases, potential future changes (caused by climate change) concerning the valuation of the production assets are not (yet) accounted for in their Balance Sheet Annex. This is remarkable because climate change is likely to have an effect on the future value of the production assets employed in the two types of industries, among others caused by the development that renewable energy demand increases at the expense of non-renewable energy demand; and (ii) the current financial reporting system does not support renewable energy companies to provide meaningful and quantitative insights in expected increases of their future cash inflows and their financial and innovation potential. This impedes financiers and investors to accurately and meaningfully assess the value of a renewable energy company’s business compared with a non-renewable company’s business.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7492
Author(s):  
Rahiel Hagos ◽  
Abdulwahab Saliu Shaibu ◽  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Xu Cai ◽  
Jianli Liang ◽  
...  

Energy and food source crop demand claims to be vulnerable to climate change impacts. The new and orphan crops, which in the past have received only limited research attention but are sustainable to environmental systems, are needed. In this review, we summarize the available literature about Ethiopian mustard as an alternative energy source and its sustainable economic importance as a new promising Brassicacea crop for new opportunities in the face of producing sustainable environment and energy development. Ethiopian mustard has many advantages and can be adopted to replace crops that are susceptible to adverse environmental conditions. Ethiopian mustard is becoming a new promising Brassicaceae crop with the current global energy demand increases. However, researchers have only focused on energy source production which has resulted in developing high erucic acid varieties. This results partly in limited studies on developing Ethiopian mustard edible oil varieties. The adoption and scaling-up of this promising crop as an oilseed crop in developing countries and Mediterranean conditions can sustain the impact of climate change with the demand for food and energy debate concepts. Indeed, further agronomic, quality and genomic studies on oilseed nutritional traits for efficient breeding and utilization are needed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Hatem Mahmoud ◽  
Ayman Ragab

The density of building blocks and insufficient greenery in cities tend to contribute dramatically not only to increased heat stress in the built environment but also to higher energy demand for cooling. Urban planners should, therefore, be conscious of their responsibility to reduce energy usage of buildings along with improving outdoor thermal efficiency. This study examines the impact of numerous proposed urban geometry cases on the thermal efficiency of outer spaces as well as the energy consumption of adjacent buildings under various climate change scenarios as representative concentration pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 climate projections for New Aswan city in 2035. The investigation was performed at one of the most underutilized outdoor spaces on the new campus of Aswan University in New Aswan city. The potential reduction of heat stress was investigated so as to improve the thermal comfort of the investigated outdoor spaces, as well as energy savings based on the proposed strategies. Accordingly, the most appropriate scenario to be adopted to cope with the inevitable climate change was identified. The proposed scenarios were divided into four categories of parameters. In the first category, shelters partially (25–50% and 75%) covering the streets were used. The second category proposed dividing the space parallel or perpendicular to the existing buildings. The third category was a hybrid scenario of the first and second categories. In the fourth category, a green cover of grass was added. A coupling evaluation was applied utilizing ENVI-met v4.2 and Design-Builder v4.5 to measure and improve the thermal efficiency of the outdoor space and reduce the cooling energy. The results demonstrated that it is better to cover outdoor spaces with 50% of the overall area than transform outdoor spaces into canyons.


2010 ◽  
Vol 278 (1712) ◽  
pp. 1661-1669 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Alonso ◽  
Menno J. Bouma ◽  
Mercedes Pascual

Climate change impacts on malaria are typically assessed with scenarios for the long-term future. Here we focus instead on the recent past (1970–2003) to address whether warmer temperatures have already increased the incidence of malaria in a highland region of East Africa. Our analyses rely on a new coupled mosquito–human model of malaria, which we use to compare projected disease levels with and without the observed temperature trend. Predicted malaria cases exhibit a highly nonlinear response to warming, with a significant increase from the 1970s to the 1990s, although typical epidemic sizes are below those observed. These findings suggest that climate change has already played an important role in the exacerbation of malaria in this region. As the observed changes in malaria are even larger than those predicted by our model, other factors previously suggested to explain all of the increase in malaria may be enhancing the impact of climate change.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Ricard ◽  
Philippe Lucas-Picher ◽  
François Anctil

Abstract. Statistical post-processing of climate model outputs is a common hydroclimatic modelling practice aiming to produce climate scenarios that better fit in-situ observations and to produce reliable stream flows forcing calibrated hydrologic models. Such practice is however criticized for disrupting the physical consistency between simulated climate variables and affecting the trends in climate change signals imbedded within raw climate simulations. It also requires abundant good-quality meteorological observations, which are not available for many regions in the world. A simplified hydroclimatic modelling workflow is proposed to quantify the impact of climate change on water discharge without resorting to meteorological observations, nor for statistical post-processing of climate model outputs, nor for calibrating hydrologic models. By combining asynchronous hydroclimatic modelling, an alternative framework designed to construct hydrologic scenarios without resorting to meteorological observations, and quantile perturbation applied to streamflow observations, the proposed workflow produces sound and plausible hydrologic scenarios considering: (1) they preserve trends and physical consistency between simulated climate variables, (2) are implemented from a modelling cascades despite observation scarcity, and (3) support the participation of end-users in producing and interpreting climate change impacts on water resources. The proposed modelling workflow is implemented over four subcatchments of the Chaudière River, Canada, using 9 North American CORDEX simulations and a pool of lumped conceptual hydrologic models. Forced with raw climate model outputs, hydrologic models are calibrated over the reference period according to a calibration metric designed to function with temporally uncorrelated observed and simulated streamflow values. Perturbation factors are defined by relating each simulated streamflow quantiles over both reference and future periods. Hydrologic scenarios are finally produced by applying perturbation factors to available streamflow observations.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsti Hakala ◽  
Nans Addor ◽  
Thibault Gobbe ◽  
Johann Ruffieux ◽  
Jan Seibert

Abstract. Anticipating and adapting to climate change impacts on water resources requires a detailed understanding of future hydroclimatic changes and of stakeholders' vulnerability to these changes. However, climate change impact studies are often conducted at a spatial scale that is too coarse to capture the specificity of individual catchments, and more importantly, the changes they focus on are not necessarily the changes most critical to stakeholders. While recent studies have combined hydrological and electricity market modeling, they tend to aggregate all climate impacts by focusing solely on reservoir profitability, and thereby provide limited insights into climate change adaptation. Here, we collaborated with Groupe E, a hydropower company operating several reservoirs in the Swiss pre-Alps and worked with them to produce hydroclimatic projections tailored to support their upcoming water concession negotiations. We started by identifying the vulnerabilities of their activities to climate change and then together chose streamflow and energy indices to characterize the associated risks. We provided Groupe E with figures showing the projected climate change impacts, which were refined over several meetings. The selected indices enabled us to simultaneously assess a variety of impacts induced by changes on i) the seasonal water volume distribution, ii) low flows, iii) high flows, and iv) energy demand. We were hence able to identify key opportunities (e.g., the future increase of reservoir inflow in winter, when electricity prices are historically high) and risks (e.g., the expected increase of consecutive days of low flows in summer and fall, which is likely to make it more difficult to meet residual flow requirements). This study highlights that the hydrological opportunities and risks associated with reservoir management in a changing climate depend on a range of factors beyond those covered by traditional impact studies. We also illustrate the importance of identifying stakeholder needs and using them to inform the production of climate impact projections. Our user-centered approach is transferable to other impact modeling studies, in the field of water resources and beyond.


Foods ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 2342
Author(s):  
Wangang Liu ◽  
Yiping Chen ◽  
Xinhua He ◽  
Ping Mao ◽  
Hanwen Tian

Global food insecurity is becoming more severe under the threat of rising global carbon dioxide concentrations, increasing population, and shrinking farmlands and their degeneration. We acquired the ISI Web of Science platform for over 31 years (1988–2018) to review the research on how climate change impacts global food security, and then performed cluster analysis and research hotspot analysis with VosViewer software. We found there were two drawbacks that exist in the current research. Firstly, current field research data were defective because they were collected from various facilities and were hard to integrate. The other drawback is the representativeness of field research site selection as most studies were carried out in developed countries and very few in developing countries. Therefore, more attention should be paid to developing countries, especially some African and Asian countries. At the same time, new modified mathematical models should be utilized to process and integrate the data from various facilities and regions. Finally, we suggested that governments and organizations across the world should be united to wrestle with the impact of climate change on food security.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 6-17
Author(s):  
O. V. Efimova ◽  
O. V. Rozhnova

The article is devoted to the harmonization of financial and non-financial reporting of the organization and the development of a strategy in the field of climate risks. In the first part of the article the main attention is paid to the analysis of the impact of these risks on the indicators of financial statements, the requirements for the disclosure of information, the relevance of reflecting the impact of climate change on the business, financial performance and the strategy. The second part formulates the recommendations for developing a strategy of harmonizing financial and non-financial reporting in the field of climate risks and for preparing disclosures regarding the interdependence of climate change impact and the company’s activities. The study is intended for government agencies of the Russian Federation, professional international organizations involved in the development of financial and non-financial reporting standards, interested users, as well as economic entities that develop internal accounting and reporting standards.


Author(s):  
Praveen Cheekatamarla ◽  
Vishaldeep Sharma ◽  
Bo Shen

Abstract Economic and population growth is leading to increased energy demand across all sectors – buildings, transportation, and industry. Adoption of new energy consumers such as electric vehicles could further increase this growth. Sensible utilization of clean renewable energy resources is necessary to sustain this growth. Thermal needs in a building pose a significant challenge to the energy infrastructure. Supporting the current and future building thermal energy needs to offset the total electric demand while lowering the carbon footprint and enhancing the grid flexibility is presented in this study. Performance assessment of heat pumps, renewable energy, non-fossil fuel-based cogeneration systems, and their hybrid configurations was conducted. The impact of design configuration, coefficient of performance (COP), electric grid's primary energy efficiency on the key attributes of total carbon footprint, life cycle costs, operational energy savings, and site-specific primary energy efficiency are analyzed and discussed in detail.


1999 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-231
Author(s):  
Peter Lee ◽  
Pearl Tan

The management of Worldwide Shipping Corporation Ltd (hereafter “Worldwide Shipping”) is confronted with a dilemma when a new international accounting standard on leases is introduced which contains a transitional provision allowing firms to defer implementation for a period of four years. Students are required to put themselves in the position of managers who have to weigh the adverse impact of early adoption of the new accounting standard against a responsibility for fair financial reporting. Worldwide Shipping is a multifaceted case that can be used as an accounting case study or a financial analysis study. The objectives of the case are threefold. First, it aims to provide students with a better understanding of the impact of off-balance sheet transactions (in this case, sale-leaseback contracts) on a firm's financial statements. Second, it requires students to examine implications of accounting choice on management compensation and debt-contracting costs, as well as the perplexing problem of recognition in financial statements vs. footnote disclosures. By putting students in the position of managers, the case increases students' awareness of the possible economic consequences arising from accounting choice. Third, it provides students with a useful exercise in the mechanics of effecting a change in accounting method using the retroactive method.


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