Financial Climate

Like so many things in Silicon Valley, venture capital investment in climate tech is cyclical. Climate tech first gained attention from venture capitalists starting around 2006, thanks in part to legendary venture investor John Doerr. After initially seeming to fizzle, climate tech VC bouced back. In 2021, at least $49 billion of climate tech VC investments were made, which PWC estimates at 14% of the year’s total. Since then, clim...

In the U.S., between 2020 and 2024, the total cost of major weather related disasters averaged about $150 billion per year. That’s more than five times the annual average during the 1980s, even after adjusting for inflation. At the same time as they’ve gotten more costly, major disasters have become more frequent. Inevitably, increasing losses have begun to strain property insurers. In some areas, like parts of California, premiums...

Few people are more closely associated with the climate movement than Bill McKibben. In 1989 he published The End of Nature. It was the first popular book for a broad audience on the climate crisis. Over more than 35 years since then, he’s written about 20 books, and many, many articles in prominent publications. In 2008, he founded a climate advocacy nonprofit called 350.org, which now has about $20 million in annual revenues and ...

Anyone paying even a bit of attention to climate solutions knows that we’ve seen in recent years tremendous development of wind and solar power generation. Most people also understand that that development needs to continue, along with deployment of other carbon-free power sources. 

But in order for the clean energy transition to succeed, we also need to make ambitious improvements to America’s transmission grid. The transmission sy...

In the last episode of this show, I had the privilege of talking with Elizabeth Burch and Adam Orford, two law professors from University of Georgia. They helped me to better understand many of the types of climate lawsuits that have proliferated in recent years.

But there are so many varieties of climate litigation that there’s a whole other category we barely touched on, which has special relevance to the nexus of climat...

In recent years, as climate change has gained attention, there's been a proliferation of climate related lawsuits. They're based on a wide variety of legal theories. Some are brought under federal statutes like the Clean Air Act, others are brought under state statutes. Still others rely on common law, which is so old that it predates the widespread use of fossil fuels. Some of these lawsuits seem mainly symbolic. Others ...

The Paris climate agreement was designed to keep Earth habitable through a framework of national emission reduction commitments. But actual binding laws enforcing those commitments are still lagging behind. In response, many corporations have promised to reach net zero emissions voluntarily. Many have released plans of how they intend to do that. And consumers and investors have sought to hold them accountable.

Despite som...

InnSure is a nonprofit organization that fosters insurance-related innovations to address climate problems. Usually, we think of insurance as a tool for climate change adaptation—and it is. But InnSure also looks at insurance as an indispensable tool to help implement and scale emission-reducing technologies. I wanted to understand better why and how that is. I also wanted to learn about the enormous climate-related business opport...

More than ever before, advocates are pressuring private-sector companies to take action related to climate impacts. One thing that’s increased the potential effectiveness of these tactics is the tremendous concentration of corporate voting power in the hands of a small number of enormous asset managers. And at the same time, huge, secretive, private equity firms are amassing control of privately held companies, or are taking public...

Ben Keys, a professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School of Business talks about the effects of climate risk on insurance, property values, and real estate markets. 

Relevant Links:

• Ben Keys New York Times guest opinion on climate risk and homeowners' insurance
• Ben Keys Congressional testimony
• https://firststreet.org/
• https://www.nber.org/papers/w27930 (Ben Keys and Philip Mulder economic research paper ...

In 2012, Emilie Mazzacurati founded a company called Four Twenty Seven. It pioneered the practice of applying esoteric scientific climate models to help businesses manage climate risk. She sold the company to Moody's in 2019, and stayed on to manage it as Moody's Global Head of Climate Solutions. She's now working on a new venture related to climate mitigation. 
 
Emilie talks about the challenges of understa...

Ambassador Janine Felson is an expert on international climate finance frameworks and governance structures. She served as a senior diplomat from Belize to the United Nations. She contributed to crucial international negotiations, including the 2015 Paris climate agreement. She also held key roles as a negotiator and strategist on behalf of a coalition of countries facing extreme climate vulnerabilities—called the Alliance of Small...

In 2020, Ulf Erlandsson founded a nonprofit activist think tank called the Anthropocene Fixed Income Institute, or AFII. Through sophisticated analysis of bond markets, the organization seeks to hold corporations and governments accountable to climate goals. 

Erlandsson worked for many years as a bond trader and fixed income portfolio manager, including on behalf of AP4, a Swedish public pension fund which currently manage...

Today’s guest is Kingsmill Bond, a longtime equity analyst and strategist, who has provided insights on the energy industry on behalf of some of the largest banks and asset managers in the world. After recognizing the implications of the energy transition for financial markets, he went to work for the pioneering London-based nonprofit financial think tank Carbon Tracker Initiative. Still in London, he’s now a Senior Principal on th...

In today's episode, climate economist and lawyer Danny Cullenward discusses Making Climate Policy Work, a book he wrote with coauthor David Victor.  He talks about how structural political forces so often prevent cap-and-trade programs from working in practice the way they're supposed to in theory. He explains how industrial policy, usually thought of as less efficient than tradeable pollution permits, is often much more ...

Today’s guest is Franz Hochstrasser, CEO of Raise Green. Raise Green is an SEC and FINRA-registered online marketplace through which individuals and institutions can invest in startups and other private companies pursuing climate solutions. It serves as a vehicle for for-profit enterprises with a climate focus to raise money from small (as well as larger) investors.

Note: Neither this podcast nor the host provide financial advice. D...

Bryan Garcia talks about how Connecticut Green Bank has devised innovative financing tools to bring clean energy solutions to businesses and households. He explains how its programs have been designed to include people in lower-income and minority communities. We also talk about how green banks are evolving and expanding nationally, and how the tens of billions in new federal appropriations for green banks may be deployed.