Author: Kathryn Walton

Blog Post Written by Kathryn Walton – Events and Communications Assistant

 

This year, World Cities Day will be observed by the United Nations under the theme “act local to go global,” to explore what local action succeeded and what is still needed to empower local and regional governments to create greener, more equitable, and sustainable cities. Given that climate change is one of the greatest global challenges that we face, materialising in many forms, it is increasingly important to tackle the issue both globally and locally with innovative solutions. What’s more, cities are a key contributor to climate change as they are energy intensive and emit a high percentage of greenhouse gases. However, as much as they are an element of the crisis, cities also have the potential to act as a solution. In line with the theme, at the Spanish Chamber of Commerce we were eager to reflect on the work of both local and government bodies in Spain and the UK, that has allowed Madrid and London to rank highly as two of the most sustainable and green capital cities in Europe, with a particular focus on green infrastructure initiatives.

 

MADRID

When looking at the city’s green credentials, there are certain aspects that stand out. In Madrid’s case, it is almost impossible to disregard the lung of the city – El Parque del Buen Retiro. Since its initial establishment in the 17th century outside of the city, the park now boasts more than 125 hectares and is situated in the urban centre following the city’s expansion. Nevertheless, aside from being a popular retreat for tourists and locals, El Retiro provides some serious environmental benefits including fighting pollution, promoting biodiversity, and mitigating high temperatures. The latter is a topic that is continually on the agenda of city boards and governments due to the “urban heat island,” a phenomenon that transpires due to the replacement of natural environments with dense concentrations of pavements, buildings, and other surfaces that absorb and retain heat. What’s more, Madrid has an abundance of smaller green areas all over the city that contribute to the fight against climate change.

 

Despite the fact that Madrid is already a notably green city, the community plans to go above and beyond to lead the fight against climate change. In September 2019, The Madrid 360 Environmental Sustainability Strategy Roadmap was established to identify and develop “actions especially relevant to Madrid 360 in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to stop, revert, and mitigate the effects of Climate Change.” A significant component of this plan regards the creation of the Madrid Metropolitan Forest or ‘El Bosque Metropolitano.’ It is one of twelve large-scale projects championed to “boost the economy, employment, the environment and social cohesion of the Plan, and the priority of the Madrid City Council for the mobilisation of funds from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism.” This will constitute 75km of green infrastructure connecting the protected natural areas of El Pardo, in the North, to Manzanares and Jarama in the Southeast. The resultant environmental impact will be relatively significant for the city, especially since the forest will cover around 14,200 hectares of land and comprise 450,000 trees. It will also inadvertently create cycle and pedestrian routes, as well as an ecological belt that will absorb the city’s carbon dioxide and have a cooling effect.

 

LONDON

London boasts a notable amount of green infrastructure relative to its size. In fact, roughly 60% of the city “is open land and 47% of Greater London is green.” Green spaces are certainly not lacking in the city, with an estimate of “3,000 parks, 142 local nature reserves”, and 3.8 million private gardens. What’s more, in 2019, the Mayor of London signed a charter that named London the first National Park City. The movement itself consists of a number of targets that include connecting citizens to the outdoors, promoting the “rich cultural life enabled by the outdoors,” establishing more high-quality blue and green spaces, and inspiring other cities to follow suit. The movement is underlined by a consensus of collaboration between government bodies, citizens, and organisations, with everyone playing their part to contribute to the plight against climate change as opposed to a top-down approach, governed by a single authority.

 

As a part of his ‘London Environment Strategy,’ the Mayor of London stressed the role of Londoners in “maintaining and enhancing the ecology of the city.” A large proportion of the city’s population acknowledge the immediate benefits of maintaining green spaces in the city. The impressive impact of urban green spaces on the National Health Service (NHS) cannot be understated; particularly that they save the public body around £950 million per year. This “comprises £370m per year saved on mental health costs, and £582m physical health savings.” The vast green spaces were especially valuable during the Covid-19 Pandemic, helping to mitigate some of the strain on the NHS.

 

Although there is still a long way to go in the fight against climate change, these two cities are certainly making substantial progress and acting as pioneers in the green revolution.

 

SOURCES
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We are delighted to announce that LaLiga have officially become a Patron of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in the United Kingdom.

As a longtime Benefactor, LaLiga joined our Executive Committee in 2021 and have been actively involved in the Chamber since the opening of the league’s London office in 2019.

Quote from Keegan Pierce, International Development UK & Ireland for LaLiga:

“The United Kingdom is a strategic market for LaLiga. Football is deeply rooted in British and Spanish society and represents a unique vehicle for connecting with both cultures. Just like LaLiga UK, the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in the United Kingdom stands at the intersection between these two great countries and helps us to celebrate the strong ties that bind us, both on and off the pitch.”

About LaLiga

Enjoyed by millions of fans in the UK and worldwide, LaLiga is a leader in the leisure and entertainment sector.

As an organisation, LaLiga is a private sports association, composed of the 20 clubs and public limited sports companies of LaLiga Santander, plus the 22 of LaLiga SmartBank, responsible for organising professional football competitions in Spain.

LaLiga is currently the football competition with the most social media followers worldwide, with over 165 million across 17 platforms in 20 different languages. Headquartered in Madrid, LaLiga is physically present in 40+ countries through its 11 international offices and 45 delegates. According to the latest available figures, LaLiga and its clubs/SAD are responsible for nearly 1.4% of Spain’s total GDP and generate more than 185,000 jobs, as well as €4.1bn in Spanish tax revenues.

From its London office, LaLiga seeks to reinforce the bonds between Britain, Ireland and Spain through a number of projects, including sporting initiatives such as LaLiga Camps UK as well as its association with North London community organisation Bloomsbury Football; its own 24/7 channel, LaLigaTV, available via Amazon Prime Video and featuring all top-flight matches; and various B2B/B2C events in hospitality venues across the UK, celebrating the very best of Spanish fútbol.

Through its Boost LaLiga project (LaLiga Impulso) in partnership with CVC Capital Partners, LaLiga is ensuring the sustainable growth of the professional football industry in Spain by allocating nearly €2bn in funds for clubs to invest in infrastructure, technological development, human capital and global expansion, among other strategic areas.

LaLiga is the official commercial agency of the newly formed Finetwork Liga F, the first fully professional women’s football division in Spain, and in 2021 it launched its own B2B technological services subsidiary, LaLiga Tech, powering the growth of sport-entertainment organisations across the industry.

A global, innovative and socially responsible body, LaLiga carries out its social work through its Foundation is proudly the world’s first professional football competition to establish a league for intellectually challenged footballers, LaLiga Genuine Santander.

The contact details of LaLiga are as follows: 

Contact Name: Keegan Pierce
Address: One Pancras Square, 8th Floor, London N1C 4AG, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 7413 163444
Website: www.laliga.com
Email: kpierce@laliga.es

Please join us in welcoming LaLiga to the Spanish Chamber!

 

Blog Post Written by Chamber Member Climate Trade.

 

The UK and the U.S. are both major global financial hubs, with a lot at stake when it comes to achieving Net Zero. In this article, we dive into the differences between U.S. and UK bank decarbonisation strategies.

 

Climate disclosures

 

UK banks are widely considered to be ahead of others when it comes to climate-related disclosures, most likely because of the proactivity of their regulators. The UK Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) was the first financial regulator to publish supervisory expectations on the management of climate-related financial risk in 2019. The Authority regularly remings banks that they are expected to assess their exposure to climate-related financial risks in the way they assess other drivers of financial risks.

In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission published a proposal for climate risk disclosures in March 2022, and is expected to finalize it by the end of the year. These and the PRA’s disclosure expectations are aligned with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), which were published in 2017 to help the financial sector adapt to climate change. These have been widely supported across the industry, but according to the 2021 TCFD Status Report, adoption is much broader in Europe, with 50% of listed companies having published TCFD-aligned financial reports in 2020, compared to 20% in North America.

 

Operational decarbonisation

 

In the banking sector, scope 1 and 2 emissions represent only a small fraction of total carbon footprint, with much more coming from lending (scope 3). As such, carbon neutrality in banks’ own emissions from operations and energy is generally the first milestone to be achieved.

In the UK, NatWest and Barclays have been carbon-neutral in scope 1 and 2 emissions since 2020. Lloyd’s Bank already uses 100% renewable energy and plans to reach Net Zero operational emissions by 2030. HSBC is also working towards a Net Zero by 2030 target for its own operations, while Standard Chartered plans to reach this goal by 2025.

Meanwhile in the U.S, Wells Fargo and Bank of America achieved carbon neutrality for their own operations in 2019, while JP Morgan reached this goal in 2020 and Morgan Stanley plans to be carbon neutral in 2022.

Here it’s interesting to look at the wording used by banks: in the UK, Net Zero tends to be the preferred target, which involves a drastic reduction in emissions before carbon offsets can be used to “neutralize” remaining emissions. This target is more difficult to achieve, but much more effective to combat climate change. In the U.S, banks seem to prefer reaching the words “carbon neutrality”, which can be achieved mostly through carbon offsetting, with no minimum reduction. They reached their carbon neutrality goal earlier than UK banks, and are now focusing on reducing their operational emissions. Citi is the only large U.S. bank with a Net Zero target for its own operations (by 2030).

 

Funding for fossil fuels

 

U.S. banks are among the biggest financiers of fossil fuels worldwide. The Banking on Climate Chaos report exposes the ‘Dirty Dozen’, the 12 banks that have financed the most fossil fuels since the signing of the Paris Agreement. Five of those are American, including four at the top of the list: JP Morgan (US$382B), Citi (US$285B), Wells Fargo (US$272B) and Bank of America (US$232B). Morgan Stanley is the last of the 12, with US$137B.

In April 2022, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Citigroup all proposed changes to their fossil fuel funding policies, but were only backed by around 11-13% of shareholders.

Meanwhile, only one UK bank (Barclays) made the Dirty Dozen list, with US$167B of funding to fossil fuels since 2016. But even though the amount of financing to polluting industries is lower than in the U.S, banks in the UK did not fare much better than their American counterparts when it comes to their strategy to decarbonize lending. Only Lloyd’s Banking Group has made some exclusions from its portfolio: new oil field developments and companies involved in the exploration or development of oil sands can no longer receive funding from the bank.

On the other hand, all large banks in the UK and in the U.S. have exclusion policies in place for coal financing, with UK institutions tending to be stricter than in the U.S.

 

Customer carbon offsetting 

 

In addition to the above efforts, several banks have launched carbon tracking tools for their private customers, promoting individual climate action. This is particularly common in Australia, with Commonwealth Bank and Westpac both offering this feature. But none of the large U.S. banks analysed in this article appear to offer this option. In the UK, NatWest has partnered with CoGo to offer customers a summary of their carbon footprint, as well as tips to reduce it, through its banking app.

However, few banks also give their clients the option to offset their carbon footprint. In Spain, Santander Bank has launched a new feature that allows customers not only to track and reduce their carbon emissions, but to offset them via the ClimateTrade platform. The bank has plans to roll out the service for its UK customers in the coming months.

ClimateTrade’s API can be integrated into any banking application or website to present users with a summary of their emissions, calculated according to their card and direct debit transactions. It then gives customers the option to offset this footprint directly from their account by contributing to sustainable projects worldwide. All projects offered by ClimateTrade are certified by internationally recognized standards like Verra, Gold Standard of the CDM, and aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Additionally, all transactions are fully traceable thanks to block chain technology.

If you are interested in knowing more, click here or see below for a closer look at the most effective Net Zero strategies for small and midsize banks, including carbon reduction measures, low-carbon lending and carbon offsetting technologies in ClimateTrade’s E-Book.

 

[button link=”https://climatetrade.com/decarbonized-economy-small-midsize-banking-industry/” newwindow=”yes”] CLIMATE TRADE E-BOOK[/button]

 

 

 

Blog post written by Tour Spain

 

This month Spain joins countries around the world to collectively celebrate a special post-pandemic World Tourism Day. The day takes place on Tuesday 27th September, a day which has been observed each year since 1980 by the United Nations. In 2022, the official celebration will be held in Bali, Indonesia. The date reflects the anniversary of the adoption of the UNWTO Statutes, an event that happened in 1970.

 

The theme of this year’s World Tourism Day is around rethinking tourism and comes at a time when the shift towards tourism is being recognised as a crucial pillar for development is well underway. Tourism remains one of the world’s most important economic sectors, employing one in every ten people and providing livelihoods to hundreds of millions more. In Spain, tourism accounts for over 12% of our economy and tourism-related activities accounts for 40% of our employment.

 

The day marks a chance for us all to highlight awareness of tourism’s social, cultural, political and economic value and the contribution that the sector can make towards reaching the Sustainable Development Goals. Globally, attitudes towards sustainable travel have shifted and Spain like many other counties has underlined a strong commitment to sustainability in this new post-pandemic era. This includes a €1.9 million investment towards Spain’s sustainable tourism strategy which will be executed in a three-year time frame, between 2022 and 2024. Many of Spain’s regions and cities are showcasing their commitment with a range of initiatives including Valencia becoming one of the first cities is in the world to acknowledge, verify and certify the carbon and water footprint of the tourism activity in the city. Meanwhile, other areas of Spain such as the Balearic Islands have funded many vital sustainability projects funded by a sustainable tourism tax.

 

The Spanish tourism strategy has a strong focus on regaining the trust and confidence from major tourism makers. The tourist office supports seasonal and geographical diversification and aims to ensure a reduction in tourism emissions, better waste and water management, the protection of ecosystems and the introduction of specific actions to mitigate the impact of climate change.

 

We are proud that Spain is joining forces with counties across the globe in a commitment to achieve a more sustainable future and are pleased to celebrate World Tourism Day as the global tourism sector continues its recovery.