The article linked that discusses the “Talent War” for ESG spreads well beyond the investment community. Corporations are having to rethink strategy around new variables, and consequently, the experienced talent pool is limited and in some areas such as carbon abatement, recycling versus renewable polymers, and alternate sources of fuel, there is not much history to have created many “experts”.
To a degree, this is why we see more headlines about objectives and niche projects than we do around broader strategy. The talent pool deficiencies spread to overall sustainability expertise, and both public and investor relations. We see evidence of this every day in many of the newer companies that we deal with as well as some of those more established – everyone has talent gaps. This is different from the broader labor shortages in the US and other parts of the developed world, and much more specific to climate change and net-zero, where it is the senior, planning, strategy, and communications roles which are hard to fill. With investment managers also looking for expertise in the space, we expect this talent gap to remain for years.