20 Mar 2013
by Michael W. Toffel and Stephanie van Sice
Trucost provided corporate environmental performance data and analysis to institutional investors and corporate managers, but after operating for a decade had yet to achieve profitability. Trucost was struggling to effectively differentiate its high quality products from its lower-cost competitors, and needed to develop a strategy to educate the marketplace and pursue new distribution channels. Increased investor interest in environmental issues—and an ever growing number of corporate environmental rankings—led to a proliferation of competitors to Trucost, and an industry shakeout was predicted. How should Trucost compete? Read more
18 Jan 2013
by Arthur I Segel, Nicolas Ibanez and Jay Verjee
Warren Adams founded Patagonia Sur in 2007 as one of the world's first for-profit land conservation businesses. His goal was to purchase over 100,000 acres of land in southern Chile and to run a variety of sustainable businesses to generate annual returns for investors. Patagonia Sur planned to derive various streams of revenue from the land—including eco-tourism, sustainable land development, carbon credits, water rights and eco-brokerage—thereby giving a financial return to investors on top of achieving a positive environmental impact. By 2011, Warren had raised over $20 million from high net worth individuals and Patagonia Sur had over 60,000 acres in Patagonia under management. However, institutional investors seriously questioned whether Patagonia Sur could ever do more than break even on an annual basis. Further, they worried that in fact the risk of the investment went up significantly as the company spent both its capital and management time on so many different revenue streams. In addition, some investors felt that for-profit conservation was morally wrong. Warren needed to convince both individual and institutional investors that his vision would succeed in both generating returns and preserving the natural beauty of Patagonia. Read more
11 Jan 2013
by George Serafeim, Robert G. Eccles and Kyle Armbrester
The case describes Aviva Investors' engagement strategy with companies and stock exchanges to improve its sustainability performance and the flow of sustainability related information to markets. Aviva Investors, a GBP 259 billion fund, is the investment arm of the large British insurance company, Aviva plc. Aviva Investors is committed to sustainability under the leadership of its CEO, Paul Abberley, and head of sustainability research and engagement, Steve Waygood. The case describes Aviva Investors' policies on materiality, engagement, and its corporate responsibility voting policy. It then explores how the company is implementing these policies in the case of a particular company, the FTSE 100 diversified mining company Vendanta, and the Sustainable Stock Exchange Initiative under the sponsorship of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment. Read more
21 Dec 2012
by George Serafeim, Paul M. Healy and Aldo Sesia
The case describes the process of integrating environmental, social, and governance issues into valuation models and research analyst recommendations. Read more
16 Jul 2012
by Joseph B. Lassiter III, William A. Sahlman and Alison Berkley Wagonfeld
By 2008, a number of the firm's early cleantech investments were showing promise, and the companies were starting to need significantly more money to create the massive scale required in the energy sector. As Khosla thought about the hundreds of millions of dollars required by his portfolio companies, he wondered how he should position his firm at this stage of development. Should Khosla develop a new fund that focused on later-stage investments? Should he seek investments from large industry players such as the major oil companies? Should he try raising money from the managers of the sovereign funds in countries such as Singapore, Kuwait, and China? How should the firm work with its strategic partners? Khosla knew that lining up enough later stage funding would be challenging, as the cleantech industry was still unproven for investors. Nevertheless, he was determined to continue his pattern of making bold investments in this emerging field. Read more
06 Jul 2012
by Sandra J. Sucher and Matthew Preble
Examines the investment process of Generation Investment Management, a "sustainable" investing firm established in 2004 by David Blood and U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Places students in the position of David Lowish, director of global industrials, who must decide whether to recommend an investment in ABB India. The decision pits economic development—supplying energy to impoverished rural areas in India, against environmental damage—caused by the use of coal-fired power plants. Read more
18 Jan 2012
by Anette Mikes
An early adopter of Enterprise Risk Management, energy giant Hydro One anticipated new threats and opportunities in an industry that faced climate change and carbon legislation, the deregulation of electricity markets, and the greater adoption of renewable technologies. CEO Laura Formusa felt Hydro One's risk profile had shifted, to the extent that she had to ask herself-was the strategy tenable? The case provides a rich description of Enterprise Risk Management in action and shows how Hydro One executives arrive at a shared understanding of the risk profile of the company. In the narrative a diverse group of managers (the chief executive, the chief financial officer, the head of the public relations and the chief regulatory officer) voice their views on the risks, collectively bringing a multiple stakeholder perspective to the risk profile. The case challenges students to define the problems and risks that the company faces, given its strategic objectives, its evolving risk profile, and the changing environment. The case also offers a discussion ground for defining the role of the chief risk officer and the relationship between risk management, strategic planning and capital budgeting. Read more
20 Dec 2011
by Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson, Marco Iansiti and Akiko Kanno
Ricoh, the Japanese copier manufacturer, is committed to reducing its environmental impact to one-eighth of its 2000 levels by 2050. It has already introduced three stages of environmental awareness to its operations, and its recycled copier business broke even in 2006. The company developed environmental accounting methods and produces annual environmental and sustainability reports, but Ricoh is concerned that investors may not take these efforts into account. Read more
22 Jul 2011
by Christopher Marquis and Nancy Dai
In early 2010, cleantech investment pioneer Tsing Capital was planning for the China Environment Fund IV and considering how to maintain its commitment to social and environmental practices. Tsing Capital embraced its philosophy of "Doing Well by Doing Good" and developed a proprietary system to manage social & environmental functions throughout the investment process. Some of the specific questions examined in the case are: with a more diversified investor base, how could the firm balance the different expectations of investors and continue to achieve "Doing Well by Doing Good"? Despite the increasing importance of social & environmental practices, they also had a cost for the firm and its portfolio companies. How could the firm most effectively motivate its portfolio companies to actively integrate social & environmental practices with their strategies? Read more
21 Jun 2011
by Forest L. Reinhardt and James Weber
Clearwater was trying to market value-added products in a traditionally commodities based industry while facing supply uncertainties and regulatory, environmental, and foreign exchange challenges. Clearwater harvested shellfish from the Canadian Atlantic fishery and sold this in markets around the world. They prided themselves on their sustainable fishing practices, which were not the norm for the industry. Seafood buyers traditionally bought on price. Clearwater's innovations and technology investments enabled it to produce a higher quality, value-added product, but it faced the challenge of convincing buyers to pay a premium price. Their products originated from a wild resource under government regulations which limited the size of the catch by both the industry and Clearwater. In recent years, Clearwater operated in an environment with a rising Canadian currency. This reduced profitability because Clearwater's costs were in Canadian currency while its sales where largely in other currencies. The case also discusses the challenges of maintaining a sustainable fishery and uses the collapse of the cod fishing industry as an example. Clearwater was founded in 1976, it went public in 2002, and was still managed by its two founding partners in 2006. Read more
All Finance & Investing publications
06 May 2013
by Sandra J. Sucher
Teaching Note for 613-002. Read more
28 Aug 2012
by Sandra J. Sucher, Daniela Beyersdorfer and Ian McKowan Cornell
This note describes Socially Responsible Investing, providing a brief history, description of different socially responsible investing approaches, and overview of selected players and institutions involved in the socially responsible investing field. It has been written to provide background for the case study on Generation Investment Management. Read more
01 Apr 2012
by Robert G. Eccles, Michael P. Krzus, Jean Rogers and George Serafeim
Even though the supply of sustainability information has increased considerably in the last decade, companies are still failing to disclose material information in a comparable format. We believe this has two downsides. On the one hand, companies are not adequately managing important business issues. On the other hand, risks to investors' portfolios, such as exposure to climate change, remain hidden. If this disclosure void continues to exist, the competitiveness of U.S. companies and its capital market will be at risk. While not a panacea, we believe that developing sector-specific guidelines on what sustainability issues are material to that sector and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for reporting on them would significantly improve the ability of companies to report on their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance. Read more
01 Apr 2012
by Baris Ata, Deishin Lee and Mustafa H. Tongarlak
A waste-to-energy firm that recycles organic waste with energy recovery performs two environmentally beneficial functions: it diverts waste from landfill and it produces renewable energy. At the same time, the waste-to-energy firm serves and collects revenue from two types of customers: waste generators who pay for waste disposal service and electricity consumers who buy energy. Given the process characteristics of the waste-to-energy operation, the market characteristics for waste disposal and energy, and the mechanisms regulators use to encourage production of renewable energy, we determine the profit-maximizing operating strategy of the firm. We also show how regulatory mechanisms affect the operating decisions of the waste-to-energy firm. Our analyses suggest that if the social planner's objective is to maximize landfill diversion, offering a subsidy as a per kilowatt-hour for electricity is more cost effective, whereas if the objective is to maximize renewable energy generation, giving a subsidy as a lump sum to offset capital costs is more effective. This has different regulatory implications for urban and rural settings where the environmental objectives may differ. Read more
01 Oct 2011
by David F. Drake
Carbon regulation is intended to reduce global emissions, but there is growing concern that such regulation may simply shift production to unregulated regions, potentially increasing overall carbon emissions in the process. Carbon tariffs have emerged as a possible mechanism to address this concern by imposing carbon costs on imports at the regulated region's border. Advocates claim that such a mechanism would level the playing field whereas opponents argue that such a tariff is anti-competitive. This paper analyzes how carbon tariffs affect technology choice, regional competitiveness, and global emissions through a model of imperfect competition between "domestic" (i.e., carbon-regulated) firms and "foreign" (i.e., unregulated) firms, where domestic firms have the option to offshore production and the number of foreign entrants is endogenous. Under a carbon tariff, results indicate that foreign firms would adopt clean technology at a lower emissions price than domestic producers, with the number of foreign entrants increasing in emissions price only over intervals where offshore foreign firms hold this technology advantage. Further, domestic firms would only offshore production under a carbon tariff to adopt technology strictly cleaner than technology utilized domestically. As a consequence, under a carbon tariff, foreign market share is non-monotonic in emissions price, and global emissions conditionally decrease. Without a carbon tariff, foreign share monotonically increases in emissions price, and a shift to offshore production results in a strict increase in global emissions.
Read more
13 Apr 2011
by Peter A. Coles
Teaching Note for 911051. Read more
25 Feb 2011
by Peter A. Coles
This simulation presents students the opportunity to experience firsthand the economics of carbon markets and permit trading. Each student has private role information about a company he or she manages. The student must make decisions about pollution-reducing investments and production levels in the face of uncertainty about pollution permit prices. Students form groups of five, and throughout the exercise students may buy or sell permits within their group. Trading outcomes dictate permit prices, and at the end of trading, each firm calculates profits and pays over pollution penalties as needed. Read more
25 Feb 2011
by Peter A. Coles
This simulation presents students the opportunity to experience firsthand the economics of carbon markets and permit trading. Each student has private role information about a company he or she manages. The student must make decisions about pollution-reducing investments and production levels in the face of uncertainty about pollution permit prices. Students form groups of five, and throughout the exercise students may buy or sell permits within their group. Trading outcomes dictate permit prices, and at the end of trading, each firm calculates profits and pays over pollution penalties as needed. Read more
01 Dec 2010
by Annissa Alusi, Robert G. Eccles, Amy C. Edmondson and Tiona Zuzul
Two trends are likely to define the 21st century: threats to the sustainability of the natural environment and dramatic increases in urbanization. This paper reviews the goals, business models, and partnerships involved in eight early "ecocity" projects to begin to identify success factors in this emerging industry. Ecocities, for the most part, are viewed as a means of mitigating threats to the natural environment while creating urban living capacity, by combining low carbon and resource-efficient development with the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to better manage complex urban systems. Read more
05 May 2010
by Joseph B. Lassiter III
Teaching Note for [810105]. Read more
All Finance & Investing publications