Did you know that the University of St. Gallen in collaboration with Solarify offers the opportunity to invest into solar panels on their gym rooftop? In this episode, I talk to Aurel Schmid, founder of Solarify. Together we dive into the finance and impact behind crowd-founded solar panels and discover how small scale investor can have an impact towards green energy. We find out what makes the solar rooftop project at the University of St. Gallen special and what kind of return and impact investors can expect from it. We conclude with an outlook from Aurel on the current challenges they face and what he wishes to see in the industry.Link to the HSG project: https://solarify.ch/produkt/hsg-sporthalle/

Lena Hörnlein from B-Capital Partners explains the interaction between sustainable finance regulations and their fund focused on energy transition assets. They discuss the criteria for Article 8 classification, challenges in regulating sustainable investments, and the importance of battery storage for grid flexibility.

In this episode, I talk to Christine Chow about active ownership. Christine explains what it is, its dos and dont's, and what investors can bring to the table that companies do not know yet. We explore the tension that the best kind of active ownership is the most difficult to make visible, come up with an idea for professional certification, and Christine explains that being good at engaging is like being good at riding a horse.

Tom Gosling, ESG compensation expert, discusses the effectiveness of linking executive pay to ESG targets, the challenges of setting effective ESG targets, and the benefits and risks of delegating ESG responsibilities on the board. He also explores the broader role of ESG incentives and sustainable investing, emphasizing the need for policy changes.

I talk with Per Einar Ellefsen, CEO and founder of Amundsen IM, a fund that specializes in the European primary equity market. We have a long conversation about the role of ESG factors in the IPO process, from the angle of risk assessment, investment performance, and impact. Along the way, we talk about a lot of interesting companies: Azelis, Verallia, Visma, Eurogroup Laminations, and EDP Renewables. https://amundsen-im.com

Stéphanie Mielnik, an expert in sustainable finance and sustainability-linked bonds, discusses the growth and market pricing of SLBs. They highlight the importance of ambitious targets and criticize easily achievable ones. The chapter also explores the concept of SLBs and the difference between targeting emissions intensity and absolute carbon emissions. Additionally, they discuss the feasibility of achieving further emissions reductions after initial goals are met and analyze the pricing discrepancy of SLBs.

Jan Anton van Zanten, sustainable investing expert at Robeco, discusses the open-source SDG scores that measure companies' sustainability performance. They explore the importance of understanding company impacts, making data open source, and the benefits of an open-source data set. They also address the differentiation between human and machine-based scores and the significance of active ownership in sustainable finance.

In this episode, I talk with Philipp Aeby, founder and CEO of RepRisk, an ESG data provider. We discuss how innovations in artificial intelligence have changed the way RepRisk processes data. We then move on to the role of transparency, how it can help to improve business conduct globally, as well as about the transparency of RepRisk’s own data generating process.Links to some of the things we talk abouthttps://www.reprisk.com/research-lab For questions or feedback write to isf-podcast@unisg.ch

Harald Walkate, with 25 years of finance experience, explains blended finance and how it transforms sustainable finance. Topics include wind turbines in Mali, accessing deep pockets, and scoring impact points. The podcast also discusses making renewable energy projects appealing to pension funds, challenges in dividing credit, and the future of blended finance.

Sustainable Finance has become an important phenomenon in financial markets but is still a new field. That means, there are new things happening every day. It is important to keep innovating in this field, and to critically evaluate what is going on. In this podcast, Julian Kölbel discusses ideas in sustainable finance. New ideas, good ideas, even dangerous ideas. He invites guests who are doing something novel, something interesting, something different that is worth discussing. His goal is to learn from them, to connect their ideas to academic insights, and contribute to the future development of the field of sustainable finance.Julian Kölbel works as an Assistant Professor in Sustainable Finance at the Center for Financial Services Innovation at the University of St.Gallen (FSI-HSG). For questions or feedback write to isf-podcast@unisg.ch