Episode 141: Fabiola Schneider - Sustainable Investing Expert - Greenwashing and Mislabeling - An Industry Cautionary Tale

Fabiola Schneider is a doctoral researcher at UCD Michael Smurfit business school, where she focuses on sustainable finance with a particular focus on progressing the UN SDG agenda.  She is Research Co-Lead on Greenwatch, which applies AI to detect Greenwashing in the market.  She is also passionate about issues of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Our discussion is a wide-reaching one which cycles through Fabiola's diverse areas of research.  We start with what what attracted her to the field of sustainable finance and then turn to the the most dynamic areas of change in this arena.  We unpack the concept of net zero goals, and examine how they can be set and ultimately reached.  We examine the European taxonomy, and ask if it is fit for purpose, then examine the prevalence of greenwashing, and look at how artificial intelligence can be employed to detect it.

There is more information on Greenwatch here https://www.greenwatch.ai/

as well as on other aspects of our discussion such as the ECB's dirty bond purchases here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3630112

 and on Investment Banks as fossil fuel brokers https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00343404.2021.1995601.

Like many of the other guests in this Series 3, Fabiola is a truth seeker and a diligent student of policy and the frequent gaps between policy and practice.  She also is skilled at explaining complex concepts in layperson's terms, using imagery such as a "diet" and a bathtub to convey relative performance measures, and the problem with a net and not an absolute emissions goal. 

Series 3 is brought to you with the kind support of Federated Hermes, Inc., a leading global investment manager. Guided by their conviction that responsible investing is the best way to create wealth over the long term, their investment solutions span equity, fixed-income, alternative/private markets, multi-asset and liquidity strategies and a range of separately managed accounts, distributed through intermediaries worldwide.