Border to Coast launches industry first “just transition overlay”
Author: LAPF Investments | Published: April 29, 2026
Border to Coast has published a first-of-its-kind just transition overlay, detailing how it integrates the social risks and opportunities of a transition to a lower carbon world.
The overlay demonstrates the importance of embedding just transition principles across investment to manage long-term risk. Covering investment governance, capital allocation, engagement, voting and reporting, it formalises the pool’s approach across asset classes.
Border to Coast stewardship manager Colin Baines said: “Just transition is essential for managing systemic risks and preserving long-term value. It helps ensure a transition that is fair and resilient by mitigating social risks for workers, communities and supply chains, seeking social opportunities, and focusing on place-based impacts.
“Integrating just transition is an important part of managing long-term financial risk and enhancing portfolio resilience for partner funds.
“It helps to mitigate multiple risk dimensions, including operational and legal risk that can lead to delays, cancellations, strikes, litigation, and reputational damage, posing material execution risks that can affect cash flows, project timelines and cost of capital.”
Border to Coast co-chairs the Just Transition Working Group of membership body the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), and contributed to new industry guidance to support integration of just transition.
Reflecting on the pool’s overlay, IIGCC senior investment specialist Elena Vydrine said: “Border to Coast’s Just Transition Overlay is a pioneering example of how investors can do this and put the Net Zero Investment Framework’s (NZIF) new supplementary guidance on just transition into practice.
“The guidance explains why just transition factors are critical for institutional investors and provides practical implementation levers aligned with NZIF alongside case studies – including from Border to Coast – to support real-world application.”
Nick Robins, founder of the Just Transition Finance Lab – based out of the London School of Economics – added: “This Just Transition Overlay from Border to Coast is the most comprehensive yet from an asset owner. It shows the material investment case for the just transition and builds on real experience in both engagement and allocation.
“It sends a strong signal to the market about the critical importance for fund managers and companies to credibly manage the social risks and opportunities of climate action in order to secure resilient long-term returns.”
