In the News

California's Leadership in Climate Change:

Will courts hold oil companies accountable for climate change disasters?
Los Angeles Times
"Chevron accepts the scientific consensus regarding climate change," Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., an attorney for the California-based oil giant, said last ... In response to the raft of lawsuits, BP's chief executive, Bob Dudley, swatted away any analogy to the Big Tobacco lawsuit, in which dozens of state ...
 
SPH Hosts Climate Change Symposium
BU Today
McCarthy was the keynote speaker at a daylong SPH symposium called Changing the Climate: How Public Health, Cities, and the Media Can Advance Climate Solutions. The school convened the symposium, which was cohosted with the Pulitzer Center, to bring together thought leaders from public ...

US counties get mixed grades in 'State of the Air' pollution report
Christian Science Monitor
“It's forward thinking, a paradigm shift,” says Dr. Balmes, noting California's history of climate leadership. But Balmes, along with Nolen, worries about policymaking at the federal level, where the EPA has suggested rolling back fuel-efficiency targets and the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era policy ...

Sustainable Investing:

Sustainable Investing, the Big-Money Way
Barron's
Two big themes are running through their business—increasingly their clients want help with sustainable, or ESG, investing, while heightened awareness regarding fiduciary duty is resulting in more responsibility shifted to consultants' shoulders. Those trends are creating both challenges and ...

Sustainable Investing Challenge and MIINT winners, Obama fellows, private impact debt returns ...
ImpactAlpha
Next-gen leaders of finance step up to the Sustainable Investing Challenge. Impact investing is no longer just a passion at business schools around the world. It's a smart career move for the next generation of grads that want to become leaders of the finance industry. “They will see market opportunities, ...

Ultra rich want more sustainable investment options to help drive positive change in world: UBS
South China Morning Post
“Some people like drinking alcohol, some people like smoking, some people like guns, so to tell investors they shouldn't be doing it because it's wrong, you're straightaway not aligning with their values. “[But] that's the way a vast majority of sustainable investing products have been positioned.” Instead of ...

Global Reporting Initiative:

Access Bank adopts GRI reporting standards
New Telegraph Newspaper
Director of Regions and Programs Implementation at GRI, Asthildur Hjaltadottir, said: “While sustainability reporting has become a mainstream activity of many large companies in the world, including banks and other financial institutions, this is a relatively unknown practice in Ghana and at this point in ...

Gervreau of Jackson Family Wines wins Forty Under 40 award
North Bay Business Journal
Lead strategic Innovation Group focused on developing R&D technology & relationships Publish company's annual sustainability report, with five-year goals for water/energy/waste/GHGs, based on Global Reporting Initiative standard. Spearhead initiative to develop on-site PV generation capacity at ...

Sappi North America Releases 2017 Sustainability Report
waste360
Sappi North America, a leading producer and supplier of diversified paper and packaging products, has released its 2017 Sustainability Report, ... Its methodology is aligned with international standards including the United Nations Global Compact, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and ISO 26000.

Renewable Energy Investments:

CORRECTED-India, UK govts invest in $711 mln Indian renewable energy fund
Reuters
(Corrects company name in final paragraph). LONDON, April 18 (Reuters) - Lightsource BP and Indian private equity fund Everstone Group announced on Wednesday the creation of a 500 million pound ($711 million) fund to invest in renewable energy and clean technology in India. The fund, named ...

Greeneum – A Blockchain Platform For Investing In Clean Energy
Legal Gambling News (press release)
Until now, innovation in clean energy technologies has progressed slowly due to centralized market systems, compounded by lack of demand and incentives. By 2020, less than a third of the world's energy supply is sustainable. To encourage funding in clean energy, Greeneum has created the world's ...

OhmConnect raises $8.5 million to expand the “energy sharing” economy
ImpactAlpha
Energy savings… Redaptive has about $200 million in contracts in the works, which it says could save over 400 million kilowatt-hours of energy. Real estate investor CBRE Group... led Redaptive's $20 million funding round. ENGIE New Ventures, GXP Investments, and Linse Capital also participated.

CDP Sustainability:

Sustainability: L'Oréal Accelerates Its Transformation In 2017
Markets Insider
This exceptional result was recognised by CDP. In 2017, for the second year running, L'Oréal was one of two companies worldwide -- and the only French business -- among more than 3,000 companies evaluated, to receive three 'As', the best possible score, in CDP's ratings on three major issues: ...

Ambuja Cement ranks highly in global CDP report
International Cement Review
"We are delighted with the CDP's World ranking – and even more as we have topped in the Climate Governance & Strategy. In fact, CO2 emissions' reduction is one of the key indicators in our sustainability agenda. We lay strong emphasis on development and strict implementation of sustainability to ...

Food and Beverage Industry Leads its Peers in Sustainability Performance, Ceres Finds
Spend Matters
C-suite compensation is tied to the company's 2020 Sustainability Targets, which also incorporate third-party standards like the CDP and Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Nearly all (95%) of the food and beverage companies in Ceres' analysis report on climate change-related risks to operations and ...

Impact Investing:

Report Finds Private Debt Biggest Asset Class In Impact Investing
Forbes
A new report about private debt in impact investing has findings of interest both to social enterprises looking for funding and investors interested in financing them. Perhaps most important, private debt or fixed instruments comprise the largest asset class in impact investing, accounting for 34% of impact ...

Impact investing through private debt: low but stable returns
ImpactAlpha
ImpactAlpha, April 17 – Private equity and venture capital often get the glory, but private debt and fixed-income instruments do the heavy lifting in impact investing. Such debt funds account for one-third of impact investor assets under management, making them the largest asset class in impact investing.

Resource Conservation Investments:

Companies Can Stave off Forest Tipping Points
Conservation Finance Network
Traditionally, private-sector conservation investments focus on supply chain-sourcing risks and resource-use efficiency. Many companies have made commitments to use only sustainably harvested products certified by Forest Stewardship Council™ (FSC), have a more efficient use of paper, or buy tracts ...

Eight years after Deepwater Horizon oil spill, conservation along the Gulf of Mexico advances at an ...
GlobeNewswire (press release)
Since the GEBF's inception in 2013, 122 projects have been awarded more than $1 billion to remedy harm and reduce the risk of future harm to natural resources that were affected by the oil spill. NFWF has worked closely with state and federal resource agencies to focus these conservation investments ...

NFWF Announces $26.5 Million Award to Restore 17 miles of Shoreline at McFaddin National ...
GlobeNewswire (press release)
The award will leverage more than $25 million from Natural Resource Damages and RESTORE Act funds for a total conservation investment of more than $50 million. This project could not have come together without strong support from partner organizations in Texas, including U.S. Fish and Wildlife ...

Socially Responsible Investing:

How socially responsible investing transforms traditional portfolios
MarketWatch
Here's how the principles of environmentally and socially conscious investing (ESG) are transforming different aspects of portfolio construction. Posted April 19, 2018. Latest from SectorWatch. Play All. How socially responsible investing transforms traditional portfolios. Posted April 19, 2018 · How NBA ...

Does Socially-Responsible Investment Pay Off?
Wall Street Journal (blog)
Maybe not, but it doesn't bring smaller returns either, suggests new data from U.S. bank JPMorgan Chase & Co., which track the performance of the debt of socially-responsible emerging-market issuers against more traditional benchmarks. In recent years, fund managers have been rolling out so-called ...

Catalyst Radio: Socially responsible investing with Dr. Deborah Steketee
The Rapidian
Host Cindy Kamp discusses socially responsible investing with Dr. Deborah Steketee, Department Chairperson and Professor of Sustainable Business at Aquinas College. Dr. Steketee has contributed to the development of a new generation of business leaders through the college's path-breaking ...

Funds for Sustainable Investing:

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Sustainability Investing:

SMU MBA students emerge champions at Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge
Perspectives@SMU
How do you attract a critical mass of private capital to solve the most pressing global issues of today? This was the problem put to graduate teams at the 8th Kellogg – Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge, held at Morgan Stanley's European headquarters in London on 13 April 2018.

Philanthropic Investing:

Reminder: The future of philanthropy is mission-aligned investing and general operating support
Generocity
Instead, foundations should consider mission-aligned or mission-related investing, which are riskier, often below-market-rate investments that are less concerned with financial returns; they're more similar to a loan than a grant. Barra Foundation, for instance, has been involved in this type of investing for ...

JPMorgan Chase Announces First Major Branch Expansion in Greater Washington
Business Wire (press release)
“We want to create a regional economy that benefits everyone. By expanding our business and increasing philanthropic investments, JPMorgan Chase is supporting the future of Greater Washington and providing economic opportunity for more people no matter the neighborhoods where they live and ...

The Impact Alpha, retirement plan for the gig economy, Hewlett's sustainable banking push
ImpactAlpha
Taking mission-aligned investing to scale. We like the themes of Confluence Philanthropy's Advisors Forum in June in New York. The philanthropic impact investors network will convene investment advisors, asset managers and endowment fiduciaries to explore strategies for investing in inclusion, ...

Green Bond Funds:

Star Energy completes $580m green bond offering to fund Chevron geothermal acquisitions
ThinkGeoEnergy
Star Energy Geothermal (Wayang Windu) is offering $580 million worth of green bonds in efforts to help to quickly refinance debt for funding the acquisition of two of Chevron's geothermal assets, the Salak and Darajat geothermal fields.

France: Green bond market - driving green finance development
Renewables Now
France boasts one of the earliest domestic green bond markets. Issuance commenced in 2012 when three local government bodies issued the first green bonds to fund projects that included green buildings and eco-materials, low carbon transport and transit systems, cycleways, renewable energy, ...

Low Carbon Funds:

Wells Fargo to pay $1 billion fine, pledges $200 billion for low-carbon economy projects
GreenBiz
Several Wells Fargo rivals also have made substantial commitments to finance projects aimed at accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy. In July, JPMorgan Chase pledged to facilitate at least $200 billion in clean financing by 2025, and back in November 2015, Goldman Sachs promised ...

“A sustainable economy, low-carbon, resource-efficient, resilient and more competitive on the ...
The European Sting
EU Commissioner Vella's exclusive opinion editorial is published in response to the United Nations Under-Secretary-General Erik Solheim's cutting-edge article on renewable energy investment and sustainable finance exclusively published at The Sting on 13 April 2018. The opinions expressed in this ...

Wells Fargo funds more of NextEra's Pacific Plains wind projects
Windpower Engineering (press release)
On April 19, Wells Fargo announced that it will provide $200 billion in financing through 2030 to sustainable businesses and products. More than 50% of the financing will be focused on companies and projects like Pacific Plains that directly support the transition to a low-carbon economy, including ...