Mundus International (Mundus), a provider of news and analysis in Nordic markets, today announces the launch of our range of Nordic Green indices. The indices summarise meta-data derived from our detailed monitoring provided in Mundus Nordic Green News. With climate change becoming the predominant issue driving corporate activity the range of indices is designed to enable corporates, financiers, NGOs and government to track activities directed towards the economic transition of climate action and climate opportunity.    

Sean Williams, Commercial Director at Mundus International, commented that he is very pleased with the introduction of the indices, providing companies, policymakers and society-at-large with the tools to understand how quickly climate action is taking place in the Nordic countries. “In particular, we think that it gives the international world easy tools to dissect where the Nordics are sensing climate opportunity. And it adds to the suite of products which Mundus provides to understand what is happening in the north,” he said. 

In launching the indices, Mundus has analysed over 600 data points for the period September, 2020 to June 2021. Each data point represents news addressing climate action and climate opportunity. Typical sources include corporate and government press releases, financial market notifications as well as routine press coverage. Mundus has classified individual data points by category and by country. The results highlight distinctive patterns of activity in each country. Sweden and Norway are over-represented in terms of climate action relative to their share of Nordic population and GDP. Denmark, and particularly Finland are under-represented. Mundus also identified projects that had a cross-Nordic focus, involving two or more of the countries. This represents around 6% of projects, e.g. where Nordic governments act together on an issue, or where a company invests across borders. 

Classifying Nordic climate action

Mundus’ classification of individual news items uses 4 categories:

• Policy: Typically Government announcements of changes to national policies or the creation of new institutions to progress climate action. This category also includes major policy announcements by large corporates.
• Finance: Capital raising or restructuring in financial markets. Announcements of portfolio allocations to investments in climate action.
• Corporate: Announcements by corporates and SMEs of changes to their business to address climate action and climate opportunity. This category includes investment plans, joint ventures, Letters of Intent and Memoranda of Understanding.
• Major Corporate: Major corporate announcements, such as final investment decisions on investments valued in excess of one hundred million euros, corporate restructures which create new divisions headed by a C-level executive.

As our indices aim to measure climate action, we exclude news coverage of issues such as lobbying, financial reporting and analysis of market trends. 

In our initial data set, slightly over a quarter (161) of actions related to policies. Around one sixth (109) related to financial activities, whereas almost half (294) were corporate announcements. 

We analysed the 65 (10%) of Major Corporate announcements.  

Of these

• 16 were related to large scale investments in either wind or solar energy or renewable energy as a category. Examples of this included Equinor’s wind investments in the UK and USA, Ørsted’s investments in renewables, and Scatec Solar’s expansion plans.
• 10 involved oil companies, biofuels and future transport solutions. Producers Equinor and Lundin energy are attempting to manage their brand and a green transition, whereas Finland’s Neste and Sweden’s Preem are undertaking major biofuels projects. Meanwhile vehicle manufacturers are rushing to greenify their drive chains. 
• 9 related to major plans for hydrogen projects
• 7 related to major plans for batteries
• There were 4 announcements of restructuring by large corporates to position their business for climate opportunity;
  • Volvo Group’s announcement of a business area to focus on accelerating electrification
  • Hexagon’s launch of a new business unit – R-evolution 
  • Södra new Innovation business area
  • Ørsted announcement that it will demand a net-positive biodiversity impact from new development projects
• 4 related to announcements of Synthetic Fuels, eg ammonia, methanol and PtX 

Mundus was able to observe a distinct change of pace in the scale of the decisions taken. During the Fall of 2020 there were an average of around 3 such major announcements each month, which jumped to 9 per month during 2021.

Going forward

Following the launch of Mundus Nordic Green Indices we will be updating the data set each month and provide a commentary of the main messages and conclusions. In addition, we will be releasing further sub-indices to track the details of where investments are being made.

Photo: Shutterstock