Inside: A White House fight with California splits automakers. The Golden State is fighting historic wildfires. New taxes may target the CEO-worker wage gap. White House-connected coal miner declares bankruptcy. Go carbon-farming with Al Gore. — Eric Roston and Emily Chasan

Sustainable Finance

The European Central Bank has been buying green bonds as part of its asset-repurchase program. Hungary, France and Peru are also trying out green finance. The Bank for International Settlements started an open-ended fund for central bank green-bond investments last month, which could help set more uniform standards. 

Automakers split their support between President Donald Trump and California in a dispute over the state's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes. General Motors, Toyota and Fiat Chrysler back the White House, with Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW of North America supporting California.

Aluminum might be more recyclable than plastic, but is it really greener? Some see potential for a separate, premium market in aluminum that claims it's clean. 

Green bond issuance will likely reach $220 billion to $250 billion this year amid a surge in ESG bond and equity fund inflows, BNP Paribas analysts said. 

Assets managed with environmental, social and governance principles are growing faster than the rest of the investing industry, according to a study of 500 large asset managers. Assets allocated with ESG in mind rose by 17.8% in 2018, compared with a 3% decline overall. 

In Brief

• U.S. tax changes on out-of-state debt could encourage growth in green bonds.
• The World Bank launched a data portal for sovereign ESG data.
• Climate change will drive people to gold, according to the World Gold Council.
• Beyond Meat's stock fell after the end of its investor lockup period.  
• Moody's acquired a minority stake in Chinese ESG research shop SynTao Green Finance. 
• Elon Musk says Tesla finally has a ready-to-go solar roof. 
• Miss the 2019 Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit in New York? Check out video from Day 1 and Day 2 of the event. 

Environment

More than 1.5 million northern Californians who lost power are gradually seeing it restored, while the southern part of the state still faces the strongest winds in memory and further blackouts. PG&E's "fix-it-guy" has come up against the one thing he can't fix. Wildfires should not leave California in the dark, writes Tyler Cowen in Bloomberg Opinion. 

Massachusetts sued Exxon Mobil for allegedly hiding its early knowledge of climate change from the public and misleading investors about the future financial impact of global warming. The suit came two days after a trial based on similar claims began in New York. Former CEO and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson testifies in New York Wednesday.

Al Gore says it’s time to start talking about carbon farming. Agriculture has the potential to become a net-absorber of emissions, pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and sinking it into the soil — if farmers adopt regenerative practices, and science and policies support them. The former US Vice President hosted a summit on his family farm this month aimed at figuring out how to scale it. UN scientists also said this week that reclaiming wasteland could help capture carbon — for about $300 billion. 

Methane from hog waste can be processed into industrial-grade natural gas. Smithfield Foods and Dominion Energy's Gas Infrastructure Group just doubled, to $500 million, their year-old partnership to capture and resell gas. The companies' CEOs signaled their increased ambition at the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit in New York. 

From Australia to Wyoming, coal is in retreat, writes David Fickling of Bloomberg Opinion. "A pragmatic kind of sustainability" is the order of the day at Rio Tinto Group, said CEO Jean-Sebastien Jacques. The mining chief said that more climate-friendly operations can't come at the expense of profitability. America's largest private coal miner filed for bankruptcy this week despite Trump's rescue attempt, and oil's days are also numbered, writes Bloomberg Opinion's Noah Smith.

Plastic Bank, the brainchild of Vancouver entrepreneur David Katz, is helping draw poor people in developing countries into the financial system by offering bank deposits in return for collected plastic.

A few huge companies are largely responsible for the depletion of fish stocks, as well as the environmental damage linked to the farming of palm oil, cocoa, soy and bananas. They'll face pressure to restore those natural systems at scale, Mark Buchanan writes for Bloomberg Opinion.

Social

The idea of taxing companies that have a wide pay gap between CEOs and their workers is catching on in San Francisco, Washington state and Oregon. 

The U.K. gender pay gap shrank to a record low this year, even as men continued to out-earn women in the vast majority of occupations. Women were paid 17.3% less than male peers on average, compared with 17.8% last year. 

Nike and Under Armour both replaced their male CEOs with male successors, despite marketing language that tells women to "dream crazier" and believe "I Will What I Want."

Governance 

Company pushback against proxy advisers is forcing big institutional investors who have relied on them in the past to make up their own minds about voting, writes Matt Levine of Bloomberg Opinion. 

The Sierra Club sued the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the agency's role in what the group says is a sharp uptick in rejections of shareholder resolutions aimed at how companies address climate risk. 

AT&T and General Electric Co. are among 316 companies in the S&P 500 index disclosing some or all of their election-related spending or specifying that they ban such spending, up from 294 companies in 2018, according to an annual analysis. Companies are also revealing more data about political spending. The average disclosure score for a S&P 500 company increased to 47.1% in 2019 from 44.1% a year earlier,

Note: Please send tips, suggestions and feedback to Emily Chasan at echasan1@bloomberg.net.

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