SCR flashcards
SCR · Build recall with a focused review session.
32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.
- Radiative forcing
- The change in net energy flux at the top of the atmosphere, measured in watts per square metre, caused by a climate driver such as greenhouse gases or aerosols.
- Equilibrium climate sensitivity
- The long-term global mean surface warming resulting from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration, assessed by AR6 at a best estimate of about 3 °C.
- Global warming potential
- A metric comparing the radiative effect of one kilogram of a greenhouse gas to one kilogram of CO2 over a chosen time horizon, commonly 100 years.
- Weather versus climate
- Weather is short-term atmospheric conditions over hours to days, while climate is the statistical distribution of those conditions over decades or longer.
- Triple bottom line
- A sustainability framework evaluating performance across three pillars: environmental, social, and economic outcomes, rather than financial results alone.
- Planetary boundaries
- Nine Earth-system thresholds defining a safe operating space for humanity, covering climate, biosphere integrity, freshwater, land use, and other processes.
- Double materiality
- A principle requiring disclosure of both how sustainability issues affect a company's financial performance and how the company impacts society and the environment.
- Strong sustainability
- The view that natural capital is non-substitutable and must be maintained, in contrast to weak sustainability, which allows substitution with human-made capital.
- Acute physical risk
- Event-driven climate hazard risk such as floods, cyclones, wildfires, and heatwaves that can cause sudden damage to assets and operations.
- Chronic physical risk
- Longer-term shifts in climate patterns such as sea-level rise, rising temperatures, and changing precipitation that gradually affect assets and operations.
- Transition risk
- Risk arising from the shift to a low-carbon economy, including policy, legal, technology, market, and reputational factors that affect asset values.
- Paris Agreement
- A 2015 international treaty committing parties to hold warming well below 2 °C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.
- Stranded assets
- Assets that lose value ahead of schedule because of the low-carbon transition, such as fossil fuel reserves that cannot be burned within a carbon budget.
- Green bond
- A debt instrument whose proceeds are earmarked for eligible green projects, following use-of-proceeds principles such as project evaluation, management, and reporting.
- Sustainability-linked bond
- A bond whose proceeds are general purpose but whose terms, often the coupon, are tied to sustainability performance targets and a penalty if they are missed.
- EU Taxonomy
- A classification system defining environmentally sustainable economic activities based on substantial contribution and do-no-significant-harm criteria.
- Blended finance
- The use of concessional public or philanthropic capital to mobilize private capital for sustainable development, typically in emerging markets.
- Expected annual loss
- A physical risk metric estimating the average loss per year from climate hazards, calculated by combining the probability and severity of loss events.
- Climate stress testing
- Applying severe but plausible climate scenarios to portfolios or business models to assess vulnerabilities, capital adequacy, and strategic resilience.
- Carbon intensity metric
- Emissions normalized by a business or financial measure, such as tonnes of CO2e per million dollars of revenue or per unit of output.
- Hazard, exposure, vulnerability
- The three components of climate risk: the physical event, what is in its path, and how susceptible that asset or population is to harm.
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways
- Five socioeconomic narratives, SSP1 to SSP5, describing alternative futures for population, growth, and technology used in climate scenario analysis.
- Representative Concentration Pathways
- Trajectories of radiative forcing, such as RCP2.6 and RCP8.5, used to model climate outcomes under different emissions levels.
- NGFS scenarios
- A set of climate scenarios for financial institutions, including Net Zero 2050, Delayed Transition, and Current Policies, spanning orderly and disorderly transitions.
- Orderly transition
- A scenario in which climate policy is introduced early and gradually, reducing transition risk while limiting physical risk through timely decarbonization.
- Net zero definition
- A state in which anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions released to the atmosphere are balanced by anthropogenic removals over a specified period.
- Scope 3 emissions
- Indirect value chain emissions, including purchased goods, upstream and downstream transport, use of sold products, and end-of-life treatment.
- Carbon budget
- The cumulative amount of CO2 that can be emitted while limiting warming to a given level, such as 1.5 °C or 2 °C above pre-industrial.
- SBTi Net-Zero Standard
- A framework requiring companies to set near-term targets over 5 to 10 years and long-term net-zero targets by 2050 at the latest.
- TNFD LEAP approach
- A four-step nature risk assessment process: locate interface with nature, evaluate dependencies and impacts, assess risks and opportunities, and prepare to respond.
- Nature-related dependencies
- Business reliance on ecosystem services such as water regulation, pollination, and raw materials that could be disrupted by nature loss.
- Transition plan
- A time-bound, action-oriented strategy aligning a company's business model and operations with a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy.