The global shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy will continue regardless of political action such as President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement or outbursts from ex-Australian prime ministers, a senior ratings analyst says.
"The tide has turned," said Michael Wilkins, the head of climate and environmental risks at Standard & Poor's Global Ratings, adding the transition meant the economic viability of assets such as coal mines and coal-fired power stations would be "vastly impaired".
Mr Wilkins' comments come as new S&P research points to deep falls in the costs of renewable energy as other groups report important shifts by corporations at home and abroad on climate risks.
Mr Wilkins said investors, including in Australia, were increasingly demanding to know how companies were monitoring financial exposure to climate change - and what they were doing about the threats.
The risks include challenges their businesses will face in a carbon-constrained world but also the physical damage posed by more extreme weather events as the planet heats up.
Pressure for disclosure is only likely to increase as groups, such as the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure, win the backing of the central banks of G20 nations.
Mr Wilkins said it was understandable if commodity-based economies such as Australia moved slower than other nations but even here investors were starting to act.
"Despite various U-turns in Australia politics on climate change topics, there is still a very progressive trend in Australia for sustainable finance and renewable energy," Mr Wilkins told Fairfax Media during a visit to Sydney.
Research out this month by S&P found the cost of new offshore wind farms had plunged 50 per cent since 2015 in the UK as developers rapidly learn how to overcome the challenges of the emerging sector.
New wind farms were being developed at about ??55 ($93) per megawatt-hour, far below the ??92 /MW-hour locked in for 35 years for the UK's controversial Hinkley Point nuclear power plant, he said.
Solar photovoltaic costs, which have halved in the last few years, will fall another 35 per cent by 2020, Mr Wilkins predicted.
"You could argue we've reached a tipping point," he said, adding that with falling storage prices, intermittent energy sources could soon compete with traditional fossil-fuels on dispatchability grounds alone even without including their environmental advantages.
Lost in the squabble over former PM Tony Abbott's claims this week that climate change "might even be beneficial", was increasing evidence that Australian companies and investors are taking global warming seriously.
First State Super and Cbus, two of Australia's biggest super funds, this week launched a new EY report examining the coming disruption for the coal sector: Investing in a Just Transition.
Separately, Westpac chief executive Brian Hartzer told a banking inquiry session in Canberra on Wednesday that Australia had to move to net-zero emissions by 2050.
To that end, Mr Hartzer reiterated his bank's decision not to invest in any new coal basin, such as Queensland's Galilee - home of Adani's proposed mega coal mine.
In answer to questions from Adam Bandt, federal Greens climate spokesman, about whether the lending bar extended to new infrastructure such as ports that supported the Galilee opening, Mr Hartzer said the principle was "correct".
"The new climate lending policy means Westpac may pull its funding from Adani's Abbot Point terminal, making the whole mine project unviable," said Mr Bandt.
"Westpac's position on infrastructure finance is another nail in the coffin of the Adani mine."
A separate international study released on Thursday by KPMG, however, suggests Australia's companies have stalled in the improvement of their reporting on sustainability issues.
Adrian King, KPMG's global leader for sustainability reporting, said only 40 per cent of Australia's top 100 companies currently acknowledge climate change as a financial risk in their financial reporting.
Still, recent indications point to an upswing in local disclosures of climate risk that will become more evident in the next reporting cycle, he said.
