IEMA responds to UK’s Transition Plan Taskforce proposals

IEMA recently held a workshop on the UK Transition Plan Taskforce’s consultation on the Transition Plan Framework and Guidance. Led by IEMA Fellow Dr Tony Rooke, attendees were given an overview of the proposals and asked questions about the reporting landscape as a whole. Chloë Fiddy, IEMA’s policy lead on Climate Change and Energy reports on the session.

The UK’s Transition Plan Taskforce was launched by HM Treasury in 2022 to develop a ‘gold standard’ for private sector transition plans. The transition plan framework will strengthen disclosure requirements across the UK economy and as a gold standard will dovetail into and build on international standards.

IEMA’s workshop was a very useful information sharing event, especially given that reporting requirements are expected to ‘trickle down’ to those entities for which it is not mandatory, but that decide where voluntary reporting could help provide a competitive edge.

Where climate-related financial disclosures require climate change to be considered against overall business risk, the transition planning approach moves climate into the category of business strategy. The UK TPT’s proposals are designed to be the gold standard for disclosure, meaning that the framework can be used as a comprehensive checklist for business planning.

A well thought through transition plan will enable an organisation to demonstrate how its business will flourish and remain relevant as the economy changes.

No organisation will be able to make an effective transition plan without considering green skills. The 2022 launch of the all jobs greener report and maturity matrix sets out how green skills gaps can be identified and the missing green skills can then be embedded into jobs families. It is clear that very few organisations are at the leading edge of the maturity matrix and therefore it follows that establishing what and where the skills gaps are is a critical yet underestimated first step in the transition planning process.

The UKTPT Framework Disclosure recommendations cover green skills but mostly focus on the board and executive management’s oversight capabilities, with wider skills gaps being briefly covered in the interpretive guidance. IEMA’s feedback on the recommendations within the UK TPT Framework is that understanding and closing skills gaps ought to be mapped out as a core process within the main body of the Disclosure Recommendation. Link to full response here.

In this rapidly changing space, IEMA will be publishing more on disclosure themes throughout 2023.
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