TCFD stands for the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures and was created by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) to develop recommendations on the types of information that companies should disclose to support investors, lenders, and insurance underwriters in appropriately assessing and pricing a specific set of risks—risks related to climate change.
The Task Force consists of 31 members from across the G20, representing both preparers and users of financial disclosures. The TCFD is chaired by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg. By November 2022 there were 4,000 organisations from 100+ countries supporting the TCFD.
In 2017, the TCFD released climate-related financial disclosure recommendations designed to help companies provide better information to support informed capital allocation.
The TCFD’s disclosure recommendations are structured around 4 themes that represent core elements of how companies operate: governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets. The 4 recommendations are interrelated and supported by 11 recommended disclosures that build out the framework with information that should help investors and others understand how reporting organisations think about and assess climate-related risks and opportunities.
Although different rules and time frames apply, these jurisdictions have aligned with the TCFD: Brazil, Egypt, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, UK, Canada, EU and USA.
This course comes in 11 modules of between 3 - 8 minutes per module. The full course takes 60 minutes and is designed to be taken in your own time, in other words you can pause anywhere and restart where you left off.
We aim to share our own TCFD reporting experiences so that you don’t have to make the same mistakes we did. The course explains the 4 elements and 11 recommendations of the TCFD while also providing a number of best-practice case studies. We also help you understand where your organisation fits into the regulatory landscape, set up your climate beliefs and establish a clear action plan for you to start your TCFD journey.
Yes, upon completion of all course modules you will receive an email confirming this and which also contains a digital certificate.
Yes, besides the course aiming to increase your knowledge of the TCFD and climate-related issues facing your organisation, you can reference the course as part of your compliance requirements, specifically in the areas of climate change and regulation.
This could and should be a very long answer, but in short, ESG is covered by a number of reporting and standards frameworks relating to environmental, social and governance factors. There are a number of ESG reporting schemes, including SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board), (GRI) Global Reporting Initiative, CDP and of course the TCFD. Each reporting standard is unique and focuses on different areas. As an example, BloomergNEF (below) provide a schematic of the differences between SASB and TCFD: