Bank climate risks: >20x new research on CO2 bio-capture, ESG ratings, inflation, greenwashing, diversity, gender pay gap, shareholder engagement, investment consultants, ML and hybrid robo-advisors
Social and ecological research
CO2 bio-capture: Scalable, Economical, and Stable Sequestration of Agricultural Fixed Carbon by Eli Yablonovitch and Harry Deckman as of Dec. 28th, 2022 (#129): “We describe a scalable, economical solution to the Carbon Dioxide problem. CO2 is captured from the atmosphere by cellulosic plants, and the harvested vegetation is then salted and buried in an engineered dry biolandfill. Plant biomass can be preserved for hundreds to thousands of years by burial in a dry environment … Current agriculture costs, and biolandfill costs indicate US$60/tonne of sequestered CO2 which corresponds to ~US$0.60 per gallon of gasoline. The technology is scalable owing to the large area of land available for cellulosic crops, without disturbing food production. If scaled to the level of a major crop, existing CO2 can be extracted from the atmosphere, and simultaneously sequester a significant fraction of world CO2 emissions” (abstract).
Regulated innovation: The effects of environmental innovations on labor productivity: How does it pay to be green by Hannu Piekkola and Jaana Rahko as of Jan. 10th, 2023 (#6): “This paper adds to the literature by examining environmental innovations as part of overall firm innovation activity among Finnish manufacturing and energy sector firms … Our empirical analysis shows that regulation-driven environmental innovations enhance productivity … Introducing new environmental regulations increases environmental innovativeness, which in turn leads to improved firm performance that can apparently compensate for all of the costs of regulation. Nordic firms may have benefited from a first-mover advantage by becoming green in many industries … Many companies set targets for themselves that are even stricter than what the regulations require because they want to set a model for other companies and stakeholders” (p. 21/22).
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