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Discover climate course materials and resources.
Search the shared repository of simulations, case descriptions and course syllabi to enhance your own climate-related teaching.
- Case Description
Companies can offset greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by, for example, funding a solar power plant in place of a planned fossil fuel plant. By 2021, the value of traded carbon dioxide (CO2) offsets grew to a record $851 billion, spurred on by public pressure and dire climate change projections. Some corporate leaders consider carbon offsets an essential short-term solution until the world has fully transitioned to a non-fossil carbon economy and reaches net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Or are offset claims a dangerous distraction because companies can continue business as usual rather than make fundamental changes to their operations?
- Topics on: Planning
- Case Description
Carbon180’s co-founders are at a crossroads in reassessing their organization’s future strategy and vision to drive a new carbon-conscious economy. Because Noah Deich and Giana Amador believe ‘big challenges require big thinking,’ they have taken a multisector approach towards climate change solutions, working in business, policy, and research. This has resulted in some wins while at the same time challenging the resources of their small organization. Also, their funders recommend tighter focus. Carbon180 must weigh competing strategies to catalyze social change and make key decisions on whether a narrow or broad approach will best achieve the goal of reducing carbon emissions.
- Topics on: Decarbonization
- Case Description
- Topics on: Investing, Technology
- Course
The module Sustainable Investments explores how financial investors incorporate sustainability considerations and environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria into their investment decisions. The module offers an introduction to the main sustainable investment strategies, the main players (governments, supranational institutions, corporations, investment funds, banks) in the sustainable investment space and the application of sustainable investment in different asset classes. A particular focus in this module is on green and climate change-related investments, but the module also explores the social and ethical dimensions of sustainable investment.
The aim of the module is to familiarise students with the main strategies employed in sustainable investments and the role that sustainable investment can play in addressing societal challenges such as climate change. Using real-world examples and ESG data, students will learn about the key challenges and opportunities that investors incorporating ESG criteria face. Students will also be introduced to the crucial role of financial regulation and voluntary standards/principles in the sustainable investment space.
- Topics on: Investing, Technology
- Course
This course is designed to provide an introduction to the relevance of systems thinking as a way for businesses to promote sustainability:
- Understand the systemic nature of sustainability and the challenges it poses for “business as usual”.
- Appreciate and empathize with the perspectives and demands of different stakeholders brought together around sustainable development issues.
- Comprehend and apply a suite of systems thinking tools that provide insight into the causes and consequences of systemic problems, among them:
- Causal loop diagrams
- Theories of change
- Simulations and experiments
- Identify leverage points for individual and organizational impact in the context of sustainability’s grand challenges.
- Recognize and hone skills that will allow you to become an effective agent for change towards sustainability in organizational settings.
- Topics on: Investing, Technology
- Case Description
High-speed rail (HSR) is a high-performance transportation technology that is time competitive with airplanes and automobiles, and is an environmentally preferable alternative due to its low carbon dioxide emissions.
- Topics on: Analytics, Reporting and Measurement, Strategy, Technology
- Case Description
This case describes Salesforce’s development of Sustainability Cloud, a suite of software tools built to help companies measure, track, and report carbon emissions and other sustainability…
- Topics on: Analytics, Reporting and Measurement, Strategy, Technology
- Case Description
The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) was founded in 2010 to develop a common set of sustainability standards for the apparel, footwear, and home textile industries.
- Topics on: Analytics, Investing, Reporting and Measurement, Strategy, Technology
- Case Description
In this case, the CEO of A.P. Moller – Maersk, one of the world’s largest container shipping companies, considers whether competition or collaboration is the right solution to tackle the industry-wide challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
- Topics on: Analytics, Investing, Strategy, Technology
- Resource
Each of our Erb Institute toolboxes is designed to help you better implement decision-making strategies for sustainability at your company. These toolboxes cover a wide variety of topics and are routinely updated to keep up with changing innovations and trends.
- Topics on: Investing, Technology
- Resource
Each of our Erb Institute toolboxes is designed to help you better implement decision-making strategies for sustainability at your company. These toolboxes cover a wide variety of topics and are routinely updated to keep up with changing innovations and trends.
- Topics on: Statistics, Strategy
- Resource
Outside the classroom, business is happening in a complicated world. Social and environmental issues are bombarding businesses with new risks, costs, and challenges—as well as new investment and innovation opportunities. You need to get up to speed.
MBA EDGE briefings give you a primer on the most important issues of our day and the ways they intersect with business risks and opportunities.
Free to download and share, content-rich, and—most importantly—written with your future in mind.
- Topics on: Investing
- Resource
The MIT Climate Portal provides expert insights on climate change, offering resources such as explainers, podcasts, and educational materials. It covers the science behind climate change, its risks, and potential solutions, highlighting MIT’s efforts to address these global challenges.
- Topics on: Technology
- Resource
Fishbanks is a multiplayer web-based simulation in which participants play the role of fishers and seek to maximize their net worth as they compete against other players and deal with variations in fish stocks and their catch. Participants buy, sell, and build ships; decide where to fish; and negotiate with one another. Policy options available to instructors include auctions of new boats, permits, and quotas.
- Topics on: Planning
- Resource
En-ROADS is an online simulator that provides policymakers, educators, businesses, the media, and the public with the ability to test and explore cross-sector climate solutions.
- Topics on: Planning
- Resource
C-ROADS is a free, award-winning computer simulator that helps people understand the long-term climate impacts of national and regional greenhouse gas emissions reductions at the global level.
- Topics on: Planning
- Resource
Latent Lab is a project by Kevin Dunnell, Trudy Painter, and Andrew Stoddard from the Viral Communications Group at the MIT Media Lab advised by Andy Lippman.
For more information, see the official project page: https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/latent-lab/overview/
- Topics on: Planning
- Resource
This platform promotes the integration of sustainability-related topics, ways of thinking, and learning methods into teaching for students to be equipped so they can tackle 21st-century challenges.
Sustainability in academia is an initiative from the collaboration between WWF Switzerland, the University of St Gallen, and the Network for Business Sustainability. The initial phase of this project was kindly supported by SDSN Switzerland.
- Topics on: Planning
- Resource
Winner of the 2022 Gold Medal at the International Serious Play Awards. Now available in English or Spanish.
Learners play the role of the General Manager of a 500-room, 4-star city-center hotel with the goal of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. As a first major step, the hotel needs to reduce its emissions by 50% over the next 7 years and at the same time optimize its financial performance. Each year, learners must prioritize and select up to 3 initiatives from a wide-ranging and evolving list that impact the hotel’s emissions and business performance. Initiatives are divided into energy, purchasing, and management categories. Learners must also make management decisions about expenditure on staff environmental awareness training and guest communication. Feedback is provided to learners in terms of the hotel’s emissions and their underlying drivers (including energy and water consumption, waste generation, food consumption and purchased products), as well as the hotel’s financial performance after each round of decisions. Altogether, the hotel’s emissions are reduced through a combination of technical solutions and behavioral changes by staff, customers and suppliers. Business performance is impacted through investments in initiatives, changes in operational costs, and potential improvements in revenue per available room (RevPAR). To take into account recent technological developments or to tailor the simulation to specific local conditions, instructors are able to tailor key settings of the simulation, including the location of the hotel (London, Mumbai, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore) and other model parameters (including the efficiency of solar panels, emissions associated with electricity consumption, and embodied carbon of purchased products).
This product was designed and developed to comply with WCAG 2.1 AA standards.
- Topics on: Finance
- Resource
Essential resources that will help you understand the key facts about human-caused climate change.
- Topics on: Planning