UK Green Taxonomy

On 14 November 2024 HM Treasury published a UK Green Taxonomy Consultation. This seeks to gather views on the value case for a UK Green Taxonomy as part of the UK's wider sustainable finance framework.

The purpose of implementing a green taxonomy is to support investment into activities aligned with sustainability goals, and to mitigate greenwashing. However, the government is aware that taxonomies can be complex in practice, and feedback on their value is mixed.

The consultation is seeking views on whether a UK Green Taxonomy would be additional and complementary to existing sustainable finance policies, including in supporting market participants to make sustainable investment decisions, and the specific market and regulatory use cases which facilitate this.

This will inform an assessment of the value of implementing a UK Taxonomy, and exactly how it could be targeted to ensure it is as effective as possible.

The consultation is open until 6 February 2025. AREF's ESG & Impact Investing Committee are reviewing the consultation paper and will be leading on any response from AREF. Any members who would like to contibute to a response should contact Rachel Portlock ([email protected]).

Author

Rachel Portlock

Head of Research, AREF

Rachel is responsible for working with a number of AREF committees, including the Research, Corporate Governance and ESG & Impact Investing Committees.

Previous to joining, Rachel worked as an independent investment management professional in real estate and prior to this she spent 11 years at Aviva Investors in the Real Estate Team as a Strategist and six years at Henderson Global Investors. 

Rachel has taken on a number of projects for AREF over the last few years, including the End of Fund Life Project, the Fund Structures Report, the History of AREF and also worked on the Open Ended Fund Pricing Project, in conjunction with INREV.