New Climate Capitalism

Today’s guest is Paul Bodnar, Managing Director of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

We talk about their recently launched Centre for Climate-Aligned Finance, which is a promising new approach to decarbonizing the financial sector inspired by the shipping finance sector.

What’s very cool about talking to Paul is that he used to work in the Obama administration as a climate expert, and was part of the US team that worked on the negotiations that gave us the Paris Agreement. So we start out with a flashback to those suspenseful moments at the conference centre at Le Bourget back in 2015, and trace the ensuing developments in climate finance since then.

Progress in recent years has been underwhelming despite an abundance of approaches, standards and initiatives. So I was keen to learn more about this new approach pioneered by the shipping finance sector & known as the “Poseidon Principles” . Is this an emerging gold standard?

It’s hardly a surprise to find out this first global, sector-wide and self-governing climate alignment agreement among financial institutions has some elements of commonality with the Paris Agreement process, although its much narrower in scope because it pertains to one sector and its stakeholders.

It was a real treat to talk to someone who has such full-spectrum knowledge of the climate action process: Paul brings together the diplomacy, the politics and the finance of climate change into a clear and coherent whole.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thezeroist.substack.com

Welcome to episode 7 of New Climate Capitalism, and today I talk with Denise Odaro from the International Finance Corporation about green bonds.

Green bonds took a back seat to social bonds during the first wave of the pandemic. But they're back in the headlines with a couple of big issues recently from Google and the German government.

If you've ever wondered what’s a green bond and why does it matter? Then this episode is for you.

The green bond market has grown super fast in the past decade. Yet it still only represents 2% of the entire bond market.

So the big question is whether the green bond market will continue to be a niche that finances the greenest bits of the economy, or whether it can go mainstream and allow the entire bond market to align itself with an economic transition that keeps us under 2C of warming.

Denise and I talked about where the green bond came from, what makes a bond green, and what is the future of the green bond market. This episodes also features a special appearance by my cat.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thezeroist.substack.com

Since 2015, climate change has gone from being a niche technical subject to a must-have competence for company boards. What are boards doing to ensure that they have that competence is the focus of today’s discussion.

Gillian Karran-Cumberlege is a steering committee member of Chapter Zero, the UK director's forum for learning about climate change, a corporate governance expert who is both an advisor to boards and a board member herself.

We talked about the importance of diversity on boards as a key to unlocking that climate competence - diverse boards do tend to be more curious and quick to learn on climate change. And how important it is for women - still only one-third of all boards in the UK - to not be invisible, to have a voice in the boardroom that goes way beyond asserting technical competence.

Change is coming to the boardroom, and it’s being driven by everything from the impacts of climate change on business strategy to Black Lives Matter to the COVID-19 pandemic. But is that change happening fast enough?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thezeroist.substack.com

Thierry Philipponnat is Head of Advocacy and Research at the Brussels-based NGO Finance Watch, and author of a new report called “Breaking the Climate-Finance Doom Loop”. In this episode, he explains why banks are trapped in this cycle of continuing to fund risky oil and gas exploration and operations which put the stability of the entire financial system at risk. And how that doom loop can be broken through a simple tweak to the rules on banks capital risk requirements under European law.

Banks are coming under fire for bankrolling the brown economy. Central banks and regulators acknowledge something has to change, but everyone is waiting for an answer that - according to Thierry - will never come. An answer to the question “How can we quantify the risk of climate change?”

He suggests that we stop trying to measure the un-measurable, and treat all brown lending as high risk. To find out how that works, listen to the episode. 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thezeroist.substack.com

We’re going behind the scenes of a new and fast growing niche for climate activism. What happens when an NGO takes on one of the world’s biggest banks through its own boardroom to ask the question: “Please stop lending to oil and coal companies?”

Unlike classic environmental campaigns which rely on mass mobilization to exert pressure, shareholder activism is invisible to the public eye - everything happens behind the scenes.

I talked to Wolfgang Kuhn of ShareAction, the London-based charity which coordinated a recent campaign at Barclays Bank. The story of that campaign reads like a play in five acts: filled with unexpected twists, conflict, struggle and, ultimately, resolution.

What's remarkable is how a small, determined actor from civil society can lead a dance with a major global bank that ultimately changes the rules of the game as well as the bank’s policy on climate change.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thezeroist.substack.com

Today’s episode is a master class in green and sustainable finance with Daniel Klier, Global Head of Sustainable Finance at HSBC. What’s the impact of COVID-19 on sustainable investing? What trends are emerging, and what to expect in the post-crisis recovery? Why is risk disclosure so important for the future of sustainability? Are we on the brink of a revolution in greening personal finance?

Don’t miss this episode, Daniel really does provide remarkable clarity on all these topics which are often obscured by jargon and acronyms.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thezeroist.substack.com

Mark Lewis is a world-leading expert on energy and environmental markets, and was one of the world's first carbon market analysts. What’s less known about Mark is his love of Shakespeare, and how he connects that with his work on climate change. We talked about his theory of change for finance and climate, how the 2008 Great Financial Crisis catalysed a Shakespeare reading marathon which has inspired and supported his work on climate change ever since, and why the world must at all costs avoid the calamity of Hamlet's indecision.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thezeroist.substack.com

My first guest is Sony Kapoor, he’s Managing Director of the Nordic Institute for Finance, Technology and Sustainability. Since we spoke in March, the oil price has hit new historic lows and underscored how Norway is cautionary tale on the epic battle ahead on how to decouple from heavy fossil-dependency. We talked about the Norway Oil Fund, and how it’s become a flashpoint between politics, finance and civil society about Norway’s economic future.

Despite Norway’s image as a clean, green, Nordic nation, it shares some surprising traits in common with other oil producing countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thezeroist.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to New Climate Capitalism, a podcast about change-makers working at the crossroads of climate, finance and investment. I’m your host, Denise Young, and I’ll be talking to people who are making a difference in green finance today, the ones who are really passionate about change. We’ll find out how they ended up in this space, what inspires them, what they’re working on, and what we can learn from them about upping our personal agency on climate action through investment.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thezeroist.substack.com