Dr Ian Woods
Specialist, Climate Change and Responsible Investment,
Chronos Sustainability
Dr Ian Woods (specialist, climate change and responsible investment) is an expert on climate change and the integration of ESG into investment decision-making. In this role he has provided advice to a large vertical integrated retail fund manager on climate change strategy and prepared a roadmap for implementation across all divisions of the organisation.
He has also provided advice to the Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC) on the assessment of company board climate change competency and the UK’s Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change on Paris-aligned investment for infrastructure investors, both debt and equity, and private and listed. He is currently working with the PRI on ESG data requirements for investors, including climate change data requirements.
He was previously the manager of AMP Capital’s ESG and sustainable Iinvestments team, building up the practice over 19 years. As part of this, he worked extensively with AMP Capital’s ESG Strategy and with AMP Capital’s global equity and fixed interest teams integrating ESG into investment processes, and reviewing the ESG drivers and performance of companies. This included the assessment of climate change risk, particularly from climate change policy, market dynamics and technology.
Prior to joining AMP Capital, Dr Woods was the manager of a leading Australian environmental consulting company. His work included undertaking environmental impact assessments of major mining and electricity generation sector projects, which specifically considered analysing and understanding the impacts on local communities.
Dr Woods has written numerous thought pieces on the assessment of climate change and the approach to aggregating ESG and climate change to a portfolio level within asset classes and across assets classes. He was the founder of the Investor Group on Climate Change (Aust/NZ) in 2006 and was deputy chair of IGCC for over ten years. He was the chair of the IGCC Policy Working Group and is currently a member of the IGCC Policy and Advocacy Working Group and the IGCC Physical Risk & Resilience Working Group. Dr Woods is also currently on a number of fund ESG advisory committees and was a member of the Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative Coordinating Working Group.