Welcome & About Whistl
Strategy
After completing our initial scenario analysis, we conducted collaborative workshops to assess the potential business and financial implications of our identified risks and opportunities. These workshops were attended by senior leaders and key stakeholders, including the Head of ESG and Sustainability, the Business Service and ESG Director and subject matter experts from across our business units. All provided insights and supported the risk and opportunity assessments. The collective insights from these workshops provided a comprehensive evaluation of climate-related risks and opportunities in their projected impact areas. In FY23, we strengthened our analysis by describing and quantifying the financial impact of our most material climate- related risks and opportunities. This involved assessing potential effects on the financial position (assets, liabilities, capital and financing) and performance (revenue and expenditures) for each identified risk and opportunity. The most significant climate-related risks and opportunities for Whistl are summarised on the following page.
A primary objective of the TCFD recommendations is for companies to identify climate-related risks and opportunities across short-, medium- and long-term horizons and outline their influence on the strategy and financial planning of their organisation. The desired outcome is an enhanced strategic resilience achieved through adaptation and the implementation of control measures. This section of our climate-related disclosures illustrates how Whistl has strengthened its strategic resilience by incorporating the management of climate-related risks and opportunities into our overall business strategy. In 2022, Whistl declared its commitment to combatting climate change, and we took our first steps to identify our climate-related risks and opportunities. We developed a robust approach to climate scenario analysis to inform how climate-related risks may impact our business. We undertook our climate scenario analysis in line with the climate science released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UK Met Office, identifying two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) as the climate emission scenarios for our modelling.1 The RCPs represent two contrasting potential climate change futures.
To inform our scenario analysis, we took a portfolio-wide approach to consider the most significant climate-related risks and opportunities for Whistl’s business across the UK. This process used climate data from the Met Office to identify the projected climate changes across England, Scotland and Wales.2 The TCFD suggests examining short-, medium- and long-term time horizons for each scenario to provide a comprehensive overview of potential outcomes. The designated milestone year signifies when we should evaluate the risk for Whistl for each specified time horizon. The time horizons we chose align with global emissions milestones spanning from the current period to 2050. For each identified climate-related risk and opportunity, we therefore assessed the significance across the short term (2022 to 2030), medium term (2030 to 2040) and long term (2040 to 2050). In order to be consistent with TCFD requirements, we assessed the following. • Transition risks: Policy and legal, technological, market and reputation impacts associated with the implementation of measures to reach a low-carbon economy. • Physical risks: Direct damage resulting from climate change. These can be event-driven (acute) or long-term shifts (chronic) in climate patterns. • Opportunities: Realised benefits of climate change arising from new policies, operational efficiencies and resource efficiencies, capitalising upon the low-carbon market and technological drivers. Our assessment of Whistl’s climate-related risks and opportunities considered both current and future strategic control measures to enhance the resilience of our business strategy, and then applied these measures to both of our chosen RCPs. Over time, we will continue to assess our business strategies against our identified climate-related impacts. This will include current and emerging risks and opportunities across the regulatory landscape, such as imposing limits on emissions, as well as the most prevalent transition risks to our business strategy.
Whistl’s ESG strategy
Valuing colleagues
Fulfilling opportunities
A predicted global temperature increase of between 1.7°C and 3.2°C, in line with current climate change policies, pledges and commitments. If the world continues on its current trajectory, this is seen as the most likely scenario. A global temperature increase of between 3.2°C and 5.4°C, where carbon emissions continue growing, unmitigated. With no mitigation, this is deemed the worst-case scenario.
Medium- emission scenario (RCP4.5) High- emission scenario (RCP8.5)
Preserving our natural environment
Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures
1 Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) were defined by the IPCC. The RCPs are considered a method to set different scenarios under economic, social and physical assumptions that might occur because of climate change, and compare global carbon emissions against pre-industrial levels, projecting the effects from now until the end of this century. 2 UK Climate Projections 2018 (UKCP18): Science Overview Report , Met Office, 2018.
Appendices
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2023 ESG Report
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