Overview

On Friday, December 20, 2024, the Graduate School of Management at Kyoto University held the sixth session of the “Green Entrepreneurship” course. This time, we welcomed Ms. Emi Matsukawa, Japan Market Lead at CDP Worldwide-Japan, to learn about the transition to a net-zero society and the interpretation of risks and opportunities from CDP questionnaires. The session was facilitated by Visiting Professor Kimura and Professor Sawabe. Under their guidance, there was a lively discussion about CDP’s initiatives and the challenges faced by the industry as a whole.

Current Initiatives

First, CDP is an international environmental non-profit organization established in the UK in 2000 with the goal of “maintaining a healthy and prosperous economy for people and the planet.” They emphasized the importance of information disclosure under the belief that “you cannot manage what you do not measure.” For about 20 years, they have been working on creating systems that encourage action through the disclosure of environmental data while considering companies’ disclosure fatigue.

The structure of this information disclosure system involves requesters such as institutional investors, supply chain members (customer companies), banks, and local governments. CDP creates environmental questionnaires, provides an information disclosure platform, and conducts scoring and analysis based on responses to the questionnaires. Companies that receive disclosure requests complete their information disclosure by responding, thereby benefiting from enhanced corporate competitiveness. Furthermore, a single response can be used in various contexts, such as for information disclosure, data tools and analysis providers, and end users of sustainability data.

Due to the flow of the Corporate Governance Code, the number of responses to CDP questionnaires has rapidly increased, and Japanese companies are currently the most responsive in the world. However, in October 2021, the TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures) issued guidance on climate transition plans, pushing Japanese companies to consider strategies in a society aligned with a 1.5°C target. The importance of entrepreneurship was emphasized in finding solutions to these climate transition plans. Additionally, the role of the supply chain in considering emissions was highlighted, along with the need for meticulous consideration of issues such as human rights.

There is also an international movement demanding the disclosure of sustainability information. Although Japan is slightly behind the curve, it plans to gradually implement SSBJ standards as a legal obligation from 2027 onward.

Active Learning and Q&A

In the latter half of the lecture, Professor Kimura posed questions to the students, leading to active group work and a lively Q&A session. Various opinions emerged from each group regarding CDP’s scoring and whether to take transition risks or physical risks of maintaining the status quo in climate transition plans. Ms. Matsukawa provided detailed and thorough answers, deepening the understanding of both the questioning students and others. Towards the end of the lecture, a student suggested that opportunities interpreted from CDP questionnaires could be used strategically by companies and be effective from an educational perspective in fostering corporate culture.

Summary

At the end of the lecture, Professor Yamada provided the following comments. In this course, discussions from the first session to today have gradually expanded the business perspective on the green sector, and today we faced institutional issues. The lecture concluded with insightful comments on the key to solving these social issues being the balance between the corporate side and societal demands.