1st Edition
Sustainability, Technology, and Finance Rethinking How Markets Integrate ESG
This book explores the swiftly emerging nexus between sustainability, finance, and technology.
Leading practitioners and academic thought leaders reflect on the ways in which technology and digitalization shape how sustainable finance professionals address environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. Together, the contributors identify three spheres in which technology shapes how investors make sense of such issues:
- ESG and technology: finance professionals need to know about how technological innovations, such as chemical recycling for plastics, in the real economy shape firms’ ESG performance;
- ESG through technology: technological developments, such as AI and blockchain, can enable finance professionals to offer more fine-grained ESG analyses; and
- ESG as technology: the ESG agenda itself is influenced by technological developments that are not well understood by practitioners (e.g., data mining for Bitcoin creating significant emissions).
Using practically relevant examples and recent insights from people working in the field, the book explores the linkages between sustainability, technology, and finance in different contexts and shows how practitioners can accelerate needed change processes.
This book primarily addresses practitioners in companies and investment firms as well as students enrolled in executive education and MBA programs.
1. Sustainable Finance and Technology: Making the Connection
Herman Bril, Georg Kell, and Andreas Rasche
Part I: ESG and Technology
2. History of Technology and Its Future in the Context of Human Development
Lars Jaeger
3. ESG—A Transformational Journey for Asset Management, Industries, Technology, and Society
Asoka Wöhrmann
4. How Can Corporate Leverage Tech and Sustainability through Collaboration? Digital with Purpose—Current Practices and Trends
Luis Neves
5. Decarbonization as a Chance
Herbert Diess
6. Ocean Technology as a Growing Space in Which to Reimagine Business: The Role of Start-Ups
Bjørn K. Haugland and Asgeir J. Sørensen
Part II: ESG as and through Technology
7. Mitigating the Risks and Nurturing the Opportunities: Data and Tech Vital in Tackling Companies' ESG Challenges
Nina Arquint and Andreas Berger
8. Resilience as an Analytical Filter for ESG Data
Ashby Monk and Dane Rook
9. Technology-Supported Investment Management
Eduard van Gelderen and David Ouellet
10. Finance, Sustainability, and Technology: Co-Evolution in Asset Owners’ Context
Winston Ma
11. A Digital Twin for Finance: Artificial Intelligence Supporting the Implementation of Environmental, Social, and Governance Targets
Christof Mascher
12. Efficiently Allocating Capital to Transition to a Sustainable Economy
Madelyn Antoncic
13. Assessing ESG from a Position of Wealth
Elias Ghanem
14. The Rise of ESG Data: A Tectonic Transparency Shift
Inna Amesheva
15. ESGT—Exponential Technology Requires Exponential Responsibility
Andrea Bonime-Blanc and Dante A. Disparte
16. Mastering Sustainability Requires Technology, Finance, and the Powers of Homo Deus
Herman Bril, Georg Kell, and Andreas Rasche
Biography
Herman Bril is Managing Director & Head of Responsible Investment at PSP Investments. He has 30 years of experience in international financial institutions across investment management, derivatives trading, treasury, and development finance.
Georg Kell is Chairman of Arabesque, a technology company that uses AI and big data to assess sustainability performance, and Chairman of the Volkswagen Sustainability Council. Georg founded the UN Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative. He also oversaw the launch of the PRI, PRME, and SSE.
Andreas Rasche is Professor of Business in Society at the Centre for Sustainability at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) and Associate Dean for the CBS Full-Time MBA program. He has authored more than 60 academic articles in top international journals and published various cases on topics related to ESG and corporate sustainability.
"Bril, Kell, and Rasche have edited a timely, insightful, and deeply thought-provoking volume on a topic that sits right at the frontier of our current knowledge: the interrelation of sustainable finance and technology. It fills an important void by focusing on the real-world implementation of urgently needed solutions to our most pressing sustainability challenges. This book, therefore, is an absolutely essential read for companies, executives, and investors who are genuinely interested in bringing about transformational ESG change in their organizations and indeed, within society at large."
Ioannis Ioannou, London Business School
"A great book and blueprint for our transition to a more sustainable future."
Rose Marcario, former CEO Patagonia
"As the founder Executive Director of the UN Global Compact, Georg Kell’s unique insights have shaped the discourse in responsible business since the inception of the Global Compact in 2000. In this publication, Georg Kell and colleagues aptly capture the opportunities in innovative financing, technologies and accountability frameworks that raise the ambition for the private sector."
Sanda Ojiambo, CEO and Executive Director, UN Global Compact
"The climate and sustainability challenge is the toughest, and most important, one modern society needs to address. But what made society modern is the force of technology. Reconciling the urgency of one with the potential (and peril) of the other is a critical imperative. This anthology draws together key voices to help bridge that gap."
Azeem Azhar, author, Exponential
"Have you been wondering about ESG and how technology might be part of the solution? Then this might be a worthwhile read for you. My colleagues across asset management and academia have written the book with complementing chapters about futuristic views on technology impact, paired with how asset managers might integrate technology and digitalisation in the still virgin ESG analytic work. The book also raises important questions about the ESG implications on reverse globalisation and the impact on geopolitics – relevance underlined by the recent events in Ukraine."
Peter Branner, Chief Investment Officer APG Asset Management
