Sustainability Technology and Finance

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.

Table of Contents

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