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This is an ethics case about a dilemma facing Augusta Richards, professor of business at the Boston University School of Management. She has been informed by an international colleague in her field that one of her papers has…
Should an incumbent metal manufacturing company make the change to green steel and how should it address its business model to be successful in its move to carbon neutrality?
Groom Energy Solutions helps organizations reduce their energy use and costs through the implementation of energy efficiency measures, which create long-term financial and environmental benefits. With early success serving customers in the cold storage and…
Ford Motor Company’s Social Sustainability Manager, David Berdish, faces the challenge of positioning Ford on the forefront of the new global transportation industry in a sustainable way while leveraging Ford’s leadership in…
Should M&G stick with the original plan to simply act as a licensor or take a more active role in the biofuel marketplace?
This course will introduce students to core concepts, learnings, and frameworks in risk and environmental management, with a focus on climate change-related risks. The class will explore a variety of approaches to risk analysis, drawing from practices across financial actors and economics sectors.
The course is broadly broken into three parts, organized into: (1) risk identification; (2) communicating and framing of risk; and (3) risk management. Classes involve a combination of lecture, student participation, guest lecture, and simulation.
Is nuclear power an attractive alternative for the production of cleaner, low-carbon energy?
In 2016, Swedish entrepreneurs Carl-Erik Lagercrantz and Peter Carlsson founded an electric battery company called Northvolt with the dual goals of creating a company to address climate change and bringing battery manufacture to Europe.
How do you maintain relationships with companies that serve a majority of people, but upset an outspoken minority? Winner of the 2011 Oikos Casewriting Competition, this case explores a tenuous relationship between the…
Patagonia has long been a revered company in the world of outdoor gear, and environmental and social sustainability. Known for pushing the bounds of what it means to be a mission-driven organization, the company has…
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.
This elective will explore current developments and trends in sustainable finance & investment, with a special focus on capital markets, institutional investment and emerging markets. Sustainable finance has rapidly become a major growth area in the capital markets, with annual sustainable debt issuance alone forecast to grow to US1.5 trillion in 2022 from a virtual standing start only six years ago. Investor and lender interest in environmental, social & governance (ESG) issues as well as concerns about climate change and other externalities has led to rapid policy and regulatory response with substantial changes proposed to the financial ecosystem.
Meanwhile a new sustainable finance assessment and data industry has sprung up to provide the market with information on the sustainability credentials of entities as well as innovative new financial instruments. Emerging themes such as transition finance, adaptation and resilience, net zero portfolio alignment and nature-based investing have also become increasingly mainstream in the finance community.
Students will work in teams of four to six, with a mix of backgrounds and areas of study. They will be assigned three technologies/business ideas. In the first half of the course, teams will be asked to evaluate the business ideas as the basis for a new venture. At the course midpoint, they will present their conclusions and choose one project to take forward into the second half of the course. In this portion, they will develop a strategy for a new venture to commercialize or pursue the idea they have chosen.
They will perform an analysis and choose the target customer, develop a business model, create an approach to developing the venture with a view to sustainability, and develop a roadmap for execution in the short term (likely a two year horizon but this is dependent on the nature of the venture and opportunity). The strategy shall be sufficient to serve as a foundation for a first operating plan for the company. Each team will be assigned projects that fall in the categories of: energy transformation, climate resilience, climate & data, and carbon sequestration.
Resolute Marine Energy (RME) founder and CEO Bill Staby and COO Olivier Ceberio believed their company’s wave energy desalination system could provide safe and affordable drinking water to water-stressed communities.
Villy Wang founded BAYCAT in 2004 with the ambitious mission of ending inequality and racism through powerful storytelling. To accomplish that mission, she created a more financially sustainable nonprofit model. BAYCAT (Bayview-Hunters Point Center for the Arts and Technology) is run more like a business than a typical nonprofit.