Redirecting institutional effort
As part of our challenge to leadership thinking on climate action we constructively criticize the financial and corporate climate agendas. See some of our research papers and critiques here:
Evolving the role of finance
The financial sector has a critical role in reallocating capital to enable the climate transition. But despite massive efforts, it is not delivering. It is time for a big shift in leadership mindset.
Responsible finance is in the calm before the storm. Ignoring systemic risk could jeopardize the financial sector’s licence to operate. A comment article for Responsible Investor.
The myth of ‘mobilizing capital’. Investors must break with the military metaphor and focus on collaboration with governments. A comment article for Responsible Investor.
Sustainable finance supply needs industrial strategy demand. A collaboration with the Financial Services Agency of Japan, first published in MIT Sloan Management Review.
It’s time to challenge our finance-led theory of change. You need to understand the fundamentals of how your organization can seek impact. A comment article for Responsible Investor.
As we financialize climate change, let’s learn from microfinance. Microfinance’s loss of focus should serve as a warning for climate finance. A comment article for Responsible Investor.
Guiding corporates for impact
Huge corporate effort has gone on target setting, measuring, and reporting. Without a robust theory of change, it is having predictably little impact.
Seeking Impact: Using theories of change to assess and guide corporate climate action. A research collaboration with Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge, also published by Chapter Zero.
‘Science-based targets’ can never be what they say they are. There is a fundamental problem in the idea of science-based targets for individual companies. A comment article for Responsible Investor.
Just because you should doesn’t mean you can. Ørsted’s offshore wind woes are a timely reminder of the limits of the private sector’s capacity to deliver the energy transition. A comment article for Responsible Investor.
A transition plan needs a transition mindset. Investors and corporates must break out of the conservation mould to achieve climate goals. A comment article for Responsible Investor.
Keeping politics out of companies’ climate action. Corporate climate action will succeed best if politics
are kept out of it—but the way many companies are tackling climate action is politicizing the issue. A Zero Ideas research paper.
Radical Realism: Climate action that is fast, feasible and universal. Too often, we are offered a choice between radical optimism and radical pessimism, when what we need is radical realism. A Zero Ideas research paper.
We must stop building a Soviet carbon economy. The hierarchy of metrics and targets we are building increasingly resembles the Soviet Union’s planned economy and is subject to the same flaws. A Zero Ideas research paper.