Preserving the world and value

Rahel Wendelspiess has been in UBS’s environmental and social risk team for almost seven years. They oversee UBS’s climate change strategy and monitor emerging risks in this area. The team members are based in offices in Asia, Europe and North America, so that client requests can be met around the clock. She enjoys the broad mandate of the team: “We identify and manage the risks related to environmental and human rights issues and we make sure that UBS complies with standards of responsible banking.” The mandate also resonates with her values. “I am interested in environmental and societal issues and believe that, in this job, I can contribute to relevant ethical considerations when doing business.”

Many of the world’s key environmental and social challenges – such as population growth, energy security, loss of biodiversity, and access to drinking water and food – are closely intertwined with climate change. UBS’s comprehensive climate change strategy thus focuses on the many ways we can support the transition to a low-carbon economy.

For example, we limit our engagement in the coal sector. We stopped providing project-level finance to new coal-fired power plants globally, and are only financing existing coal-fired operators who have a transition strategy in place to align with the Paris Agreement. We're also severely restricting lending and raising capital to the coal mining sector.

We will also not engage in certain activities that contribute to deforestation, which is second only to the energy sector as a source of global greenhouse gas emissions. Nor will we do business if there is a risk of hindering the protection of wetlands or the conservation of forests, nor if forest clearing by fire or illegal logging is involved.

Besides managing these risks, we also offer innovative products and services that make a positive contribution to climate change mitigation or adaption. Our portfolio managers can show the carbon footprint of portfolios. We provide our clients with research capacity on climate change issues and an innovative, climate-aware, rules-based fund. And we support renewable energy and clean tech transactions worldwide. We also launched an engagement strategy around climate related topics.

Also, by providing capital-raising and strategic advisory services to companies whose products make a positive contribution to climate change mitigation or adaption, we mobilize capital for the transition to a low-carbon world economy. Finally, UBS continues to reduce its own environmental impact and will increase the firm’s share in renewable energy to 100% by 2020. This is a reduction of our greenhouse gas footprint by 75%, compared to 2004 levels.

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