Career Focus

This course prepares students to invest in, advise, or lead organizations in the context of increasing pressures of global urbanization, resource scarcity, and perils relating to climate change. The course takes a finance and real assets point of view focusing on houses, buildings, infrastructure, and cities as individuals, businesses, and global society make choices about who and what to protect. There are perils and also extensive opportunities in the analysis of situations and the deployment of tools, data science, and capital leading to success even in the face of these tensions.

Educational Objectives

The course starts with fundamentals of analysis of buildings, infrastructure, and economic development of cities. The content then progresses into how to incorporate considerations of urbanization, resource scarcity, and climate perils with proactive interventions that meet financial and societal returns on investment. The course concludes with opportunities at the level of individual actors.

1. What are the core tools and skills for analysis of green and healthy buildings, sustainable infrastructure, large project finance, and public private partnerships?
2. How do legacy and new cities realize both economic growth and equitable opportunity for residents? How does private investment help to accelerate beneficial outcomes?
3. What are the timeframes and impacts in various geographies of increases in river flooding, extreme heat, sea level rise, wildfires, and drought? What are the policy and private sector tools to assess investments in reinforcement, or response, or recovery and when are these best used?
4. How will capital markets, mortgages, property casualty insurance, and public health considerations, combined with data science, influence both investing and behavior?
5. Where are the entrepreneurial and investment opportunities relating to climate adaptation, including for example analytics, sensors, membranes, equipment, real estate development and relocation, and the finance and delivery of resilient infrastructure?

Cases are drawn from the USA and also extensively from emerging markets including Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.

Cross-registrants are welcome with prior permission of the instructor. Prerequisites are HBS Finance 1 and Finance 2, or HBS Real Property, or equivalent. Complementary courses include Real Estate Private Equity, Risks and Opportunities Investing in Climate Change, and Global Climate Change.

Grading

Grading is based on class participation (50%), several polls and short assignments (20%), and a final exam (30%).

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