Top CEOs globally believe climate change is the leading risk to organisational growth in 2019, ahead of technological disruption, return to territorialism, cyber security and operational risk, shows KPMG’s 2019 Global CEO Outlook. This is the first time in the five-year history of the survey that climate change ranked first. Of the 1300 CEOs across 11 markets and 11 industry sectors, 76% said their company’s growth will depend on their ability to navigate the shift to a low-carbon, clean-technology economy.

Almost 80% of EU coal power plants are running at a loss due to competition from cheaper renewable energy technologies and gas, and are on track to lose as much as €6.6 billion this year. Apocoalypse now, by the Carbon Tracker Initiative, finds that Germany, Spain and the Czech Republic are the most exposed. RWE, with nearly 18,000 MW of installed coal capacity, could post a loss of €975 million. Given the worsening economics of coal-burn, analysts forecast the fuel could be phased out entirely by 2030.

New Zealand’s financial markets are largely not aligned with sustainability initiatives, writes the Aotearoa Circle Sustainable Finance Forum in its interim report on why and how the country needs to shift to a sustainable economy. The solutions lie in three themes: changing mindsets, particularly among leadership, to drive the change; greening the finance sector, including by pricing the social and environmental impacts of business; and by redirecting capital to projects which deliver on the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.