
Sustainable Finance
The focus of the Sustainable Finance group is how to effectively mobilise finance to deliver climate action and sustainable development.
The group’s aim is to enable the transformation that is needed across the financial system to realise the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. This will require changes in financial analysis, financial policy and regulation as well as financial practice across the US$386 trillion in assets in banking, capital markets, investment funds and the insurance sectors. Momentum is building, but it is still not at the speed or scale required. Breakthrough approaches will be needed to reconnect finance with the real economy at a time of multiple ecological, social and technological transitions.
The group’s work consists of academic research, policy analysis, work with practitioners across a range of financial sectors, as well as communications and outreach. We are pursuing a number of interlocking work themes:
- Public finance: e.g. development banks and sustainable infrastructure
- Financial regulation: e.g. the role of central banks and supervisors
- Institutional investors: the Transition Pathway Initiative
- Insurance: e.g. responding to climate impacts and rewarding resilience
- Banking: e.g. environmental performance and credit quality
- Financial markets: e.g. climate risk management and asset pricing
- Financing a just transition: e.g. role of investors in promoting inclusive climate action
- Research Network on Energy Workforce Transitions (ReNEWT)
Sign up to receive the Sustainable Finance newsletter here.
The group’s monthly newsletter includes a lead guest post from our Sustainable Finance Leadership series of commentaries from thought leaders in the field. Contributors range from leading policymakers to investors, asset managers and academics.
Research

Pricing ambiguity in catastrophe risk insurance
The authors of this paper apply a newly developed insurance pricing model to two catastrophe model data sets relating to hurricane risk in two locations in the Atlantic basin, estimating ambiguity loads – the extra insurance premium due to ambiguity – and showing how these depend on the insurer’s attitude to ambiguity. read more »
Policy

From “green” to “blue finance”: Integrating the ocean into the global climate finance architecture
This special collaboration between LSE’s Institute of Global Affairs and the Grantham Research Institute contains contributions from academics, researchers and organisations addressing the strongly interlinked climate threat and the health of the ocean. read more »
News

Invitation to participate in online Climate Risk Survey for businesses operating in the UK
We are conducting a survey of businesses with operations in the UK, regardless of size or sector. We are inviting businesses in the UK to participate in this survey via this online link, which is open till 12th December 2019. read more »
Recent events
Research lead

Nick Robins
Institute staff

Alex Bowen

Simon Dietz

Simon Dikau

Sam Fankhauser

William Irwin

Valentin Julius Jahn

Jolien Noels

Alexandra Pinzón

Nick Robins

Viktor Roezer

Swenja Surminski

Luca Taschini

Sam Unsworth
Associates and Visiting Researchers

Ehtisham Ahmad

Pete Betts

Kathryn Brown

Emanuele Campiglio

Rebecca Elliott

Richard Green

Ben Groom

Zhifu Mi

Rory Sullivan

Torsten Thiele

John Ward

Dimitri Zenghelis
PhD Students

Jon Barnes

Fernanda Gimenes

Glen Gostlow

Mike Landon

Manuel Linsenmeier

Martin Brown Munene

Yu Sun
